


This Love

by sistersin7



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Infidelity, Intimacy, Love, Sex, fidelity, modern day AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 06:29:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 90,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistersin7/pseuds/sistersin7
Summary: In a modern day AU Myka finds herself living a demanding life of commitment from which sex is direly missing. After years of being lonely in her marriage, she puts an ad on a website. Enter a shorter, dark British stranger.This is porn (right from the get go, be warned) with some plot around a topics which some readers may find controversial: the connections between love, sex, marriage, intimacy, fidelity, infidelity, emotional connection and wellbeing.





	1. Prologue (present day)

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to KellsBells who supported and debated and proofread (more gratitude than I can express).
> 
> Still – this is a learning curve. Any notes, thoughts, ideas and critique are always *always* welcome.  
> As always – Thank you for reading.

Helena rolled off her lover and on to her back with a contented sigh.

Myka chuckled, a small, devilish chuckle that Helena knew well, too well, but she hadn’t had it in her to bat Myka’s wandering fingers away as they began trailing ghostly lines from her naked knee and up, backs of fingernails scraping through the slick mix of arousal and sweat that covered her thigh, up to curve of her waist, where fingernails were swapped for fingertips. Soft, deft pads tickled Helena to the swell of her belly and down again, brushing trimmed, damp hairs and further down still, between sensitive folds and in.

“Myka,” she gasped and gripped Myka’s wrist as it rose, pulling those magnificent fingers out from her, torn between the need to have her lover inside and her body’s need for rest, given the utter state of exhaustion in which it was.

Myka leapt from her back to her side, to give the glorious woman that lay beside her her undivided attention. She thrust her fingers back inside decisively but gently, at a pace she knew Helena could not refuse.

And Helena could not refuse Myka.

Helena had been spellbound by Myka over the months she had known her, how Myka allowed her to challenge every notion and concept she had about intimacy and sex; how trusting Myka was to have allowed herself to be taken so completely by her involvement with Helena; how she allowed their time together to change her preferences, change her behaviour, how she paid Helena attention, how she paid her affection.

Their time together had changed Myka to the point where Myka was so comfortable with where they were that moment: an early encounter at Helena’s friend’s apartment in town, an encounter they had almost spontaneously arranged less than 36 hours before hand, when Helena’s friend had asked her to feed her cat, and Myka managed to arrange to come into town early.

An almost carefree (and possibly careless) encounter that saw them in bed together from 5am until that moment, just after 9am, when Myka needed to leave their exhilarating paradise for her day job. An encounter that had them – like most their encounters – touching one another almost constantly from the moment their seclusion was guaranteed.

Myka’s grin fell from her lips as she watched Helena give herself entirely, submit to Myka’s touch, let her legs fall further open to have more of Myka inside her. More and faster and unashamedly and unconditionally, until Helena tightened around Myka’s fingers with a raspy moan and a sharp thrust of her hips upwards while keeping Myka’s hand where it was with both of hers.

“I need you,” Myka whispered and sat up, overcome by a new wave of desire, “I need you now,” she begged urgently through clenched teeth, “Helena, please, now,” she pulled one of Helena’s hands from where it held hers to her own centre.

Helena could not refuse Myka, not even through the haze of her own climax. “Come to me,” she husked, and Myka complied.

Myka almost always complied. She could refuse Helena no more than Helena could refuse her.

Myka straddled Helena’s thigh, one of her hands fixed inside Helena who was still at the peak of her pleasure, and the other holding Helena’s hand to her, cupping her roughly.

Myka moaned and pushed against Helena’s hand so that her middle finger reached exactly where she wanted it – its length just slipping between her, its base stroking her clit, even without Helena moving.

But Helena did move, quickly at first, alternating between smooth glides and tight rubs, hard then soft then hard again; and Myka slammed her eyes shut, arched above Helena and threw her head back, offering her whole self to the woman beneath her, out of breath, out of strength, out of her mind.

“Do you want to?” Helena murmured as her touch slowed and softened.

Myka whimpered and ground herself into Helena, a move that drove Myka’s hand harder into Helena, who was yet to come down from her high.

“Tell me you want to,” she continued, granting her lover small, soft circles that drove her higher and higher, but no closer to release. “Because I don’t want you to,” Helena brought her other hand to Myka’s waist, feeling Myka’s abdominal muscles contract and tighten, growing harder the softer Helena’s touch got.

“I don’t…” Myka sighed, “Idontwannacome,” she extended with a second, rushed exhale, and tried to force her body to relax by throwing herself forward, over Helena. “I just want you to touch me,” she whispered in Helena’s ear between laboured breaths and reached her mouth to take it in.

The feel of Myka’s hot, wet tongue on her ear cost Helena control of her breathing and she yelped into the warm, sweaty room.

For a long minute they moved in unison, curled into each other, keeping their pace with fingers and hands, with pelvises and thighs, with lips and breaths and heartbeats. Until Helena started slowing them down. “I really do not want you to come,” she whispered to Myka, whose breaths were sharp and quick and high-pitched, “I would rather you didn’t break, darling,” she hardened her touch against Myka, but continued to slow her pace, “I want you intact.”

Myka cried softly. Helena’s words were as enticing as the magic she weaved with her fingers. Only Helena could touch her _like this_ leave her _intact_.

“I want you intact and unwound at the tip of my finger,” Helena’s voice was low and her finger slow, forcing Myka’s lungs and heart to match their speed to Helena’s rhythm.

“Helena,” Myka breathed as her muscles eased and her body relaxed into her lover’s, beneath her. She brought her free hand up to Helena’s cheek and coaxed her into a tender kiss, all the while Helena still slowing her touch against Myka, slowing the grind of her own hips into Myka’s hand.

Helena kissed Myka back with longing and love, neither of which she had ever allowed herself to feel for any of her lovers, bar Myka. Myka was different.

* * *

It was nearly 10am by the time they left the bed to shower and dress and part.

Helena fed the poor cat on her way out of the apartment, and it was only then that she noticed a yellow tulip on the kitchen counter, a single stem Myka must have left there for her.

That made little sense to Helena, because they had agreed, Myka and her, to not be sentimental.

_Perhaps this isn’t sentimentality_ , Helena excused the flower’s presence, and more importantly, her picking it up and placing it, gently, in her briefcase. _Perhaps this is gratitude, or acknowledgement_ ; acknowledgement of a whole year’s worth of such encounters.


	2. I. (55 weeks previous)

Myka was nervous. She was even more nervous than the first time around, and she remembered thinking at the time that being _more_ nervous wasn’t possible. She could feel her pulse at the back of her throat, her palms were clammy and cold. Her eyes felt dry, her skin felt tight, too tight, every breath of air against it felt like grazing concrete.

She paused before opening the door to the restaurant, her hand hovered half an inch away from the handle, as she considered what she was about to do. _You are a stone’s throw from committing adultery_ , her uncompromising moral core told her pragmatic, less-moral exterior off. _This is a bell that cannot be un-rung, Myka_.

_Not really_ , the jaded, unscrupulous cynic in her responded, the same jaded cynic that had no energy left at the end of each day, by the time the kid was asleep, and her partner was asleep, and the dishes were done and the laundry was folded and the living room didn’t look like a bombsite. _This Helena person could be a complete turnoff, or worse_. Myka breathed deeply, _I could know her from someplace_.

The fact that knowing Helena from someplace is a fate worse than her being a turnoff was a lesson Myka learned two weeks previous, when she met another person who responded to her ad for the first time. That someone turned out to be Leena, the magnificent and stunning host of the book club she used to be part of before the arrival of her son.

That moment, when Myka caught Leena by a table in that restaurant, and without thinking started catching up with her friend before realising there was a poetry book on the table, and a bunch of flowers next to Leena’s feet… The awkwardness that followed as Myka played innocent and the realisation that sunk in, that finding the kind of company she sought was much more complicated than she had imagined.

But she survived _that_ , and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think of a single Helena she had come across in her life, so the risk of experiencing such awkwardness again was significantly smaller.

And thus, with controlled breath, Myka entered Mario’s for the second time, about to meet a person who met the criteria of her ad: a married woman with a literary bent, who – like herself – was seeking a discreet exchange.

_Whatever the hell that means_ , Myka’s mind commented nervously, even though it was that same mind that came up with the wording for the ad, with that definition of the person she thought she wanted as well as the definition of the act.

While standing at the doorway and wiping her feet, the first thing Myka’s diligent eyes scanned for this time were familiar faces. After what had happened the first time with Leena… Myka was not willing to stick around if the person who had waited for her turned out to be someone she knew. In her mind, _starting an… uhm… discreet exchange…_ , she struggled to articulate what it was she was doing in her own mind, _with someone I know would be a mistake_.

She wasn’t sure whether it was relief she felt when there were no familiar faces at the restaurant. No familiar faces meant she lost her valid excuse for leaving, which meant this meeting could happen, Helena could happen, that exchange could happen – and excitement and sheer terror overrode the relief.  

Myka noticed a bunch of tulips peeking out of a paper bag next to the foot of one of the tables. She took a deep breath before daring to look up to observe the owner of said bag:

The woman who sat at the table was striking. She was elegantly dressed, but not overstated, with a white buttoned-up shirt, high collar and long cuffs, crisply ironed, and a flattering waistcoat atop it. An ornate locket peeked from the behind the shirt, where the second button would have met its perforated match.

She looked relaxed, this woman, _Helena_ , Myka allowed herself to assume, utterly unfazed by the purpose for which she’d turned up – legs crossed easily just to the side of the table, clad in knee-high black, leather boots, and skin-tight, dark blue denim tucked into them. She had a half-drunk cup of herbal tea in front of her, and she leaned one elbow on the table while casually reading through Emily Dickinson’s Series 2.

_Good choice_ , Myka thought, and almost instantly felt at ease. The book wasn’t new, its spine was broken and peeling at the edges. The pages looked rough, their corners rounded from being caressed between finger and thumb – much like their reader was doing now. This book was loved, and for Myka it meant there was already something she shared with the woman at the table.

She took a cautious step towards the table, then another.

Helena did not flinch.

_Or maybe this isn’t Helena_ , she thought, _this woman doesn’t look like she’s waiting for anyone_.

Myka straightened, and tensed. She could ask – after all – there were the tulips and the poetry book. That’s what they’d agreed. But that woman didn’t seem to be interested in the world outside Emily Dickinson.

So Myka stood for a long minute, frozen, uncertain of what to do next.

The courage – or stupidity – to beg the woman’s pardon came out of nowhere.

“Excuse me,” Myka leaned forward slightly and held up her bunch of tulips, “is this seat taken?”

The woman looked up, and took in a sharp breath, gaping at Myka for a quick second. Only then she noticed the flowers. “Myka?” she turned her head slightly towards the beauty standing tall in front of her. She was far more beautiful than Helena had imagined.

And then Myka smiled, a big, bright smile of relief that crossed her pale face and reached her sparking, green eyes. Helena felt she had to remind herself to close her mouth. It has been a while since she’d encountered someone so… noteworthy.

“Helena,” Myka half asked as she sat down, and shucked out of her coat. For some strange reason it felt to Myka as though the hardest part was done with. She had found the person she was meant to meet and she didn’t know that person. That’s one step ahead of where things ended the last time. That person also appeared to be rather good looking and a Dickenson fan. So far – so good.

“Pleased to meet you,” Helena smiled, “did you travel far?”

“I, uh,” Myka gulped, having realised suddenly that the hard part had hardly even begun. “I work nearby.”

“The University?” Helena closed the book and turned to Myka, who was now sitting in front of her. She looked at her counterpart intently, drinking in the details of the woman in front of her – tailored trousers, no matching jacket, smart shirt but slightly crumpled. A thin, simple gold chain around her neck with a small, simple pendant. Her hair was tied back to expose her long neck and the crisp curve of her jaw, errant curls jotting from it. She was well presented, more smart than casual. Yet, not quite immaculate; not quite of the standard of people Helena often worked with at The University. Myka, Helena determined, looked like staff rather than faculty or management.

“Close,” Myka smirked, because the university was an easy guess. She would be willing to bet that 80% of the people at the restaurant that moment worked at Harvard. That’s what you got for meeting someone for coffee three blocks away from Harvard Square on a Thursday night. “I work for the publisher.”

“Oh,” Helena’s eyes lit up and Myka tensed again.

Could this be the end of this attempt, as well? Did Helena know someone she worked with? And if so, Myka’s mind kicked into overdrive, _what factor of complexity did this add to the possibility of achieving ---_

“How fortuitous that we are both members of the select few employed by a dying industry,” Helena said with a wide, enchanting grin, stopping Myka’s speeding train of thought.

_Christ, this woman can spin a sentence_ , Myka thought. “You also work in publishing?”

“I am the Managing Editor for a group of publications, independent magazines concerned with the Arts,” Helena’s let her job title and description fall from her lips the way it did in symposiums and breakfast meetings, rehearsed and cold, because Helena believed her job was probably the least interesting thing about her.

Myka sensed the coldness of Helena’s tone, and took it for a request to stop talking shop. It was often the case, however, that when one was asked to _not do_ something, one immediately found one’s self unable to do anything _but_ that thing. So suddenly, the _only_ questions Myka could think of were about publishing independent magazines about the Arts.

Hell-bent on not ruining the moment, Myka pressed her lips shut with a nervous grin. She studied Helena – nimble fingers wrapping and unwrapping the white, ceramic mug in front of her, tapping it lightly with an inaudible beat, perfectly manicured fingernails and skin that glowed in the softly-lit restaurant.

Helena wasn’t sure what to do. The conversation appeared to have died before it properly began, and the perpetrator of the meeting did not seem to be interested in (or capable of) rekindling it. In Helena’s book of conversational manners, Myka, as the publisher of the ad, was the one with the vested interest in the outcome from their meeting, even though Helena initiated it by responding. At this point, frankly, Helena didn’t particularly mind what the outcome was, irrespective of how noteworthy she believed Myka was.

Helena Wells knew that she could (and would) find another lover whenever she damn well pleased, so attractive or not, she had no intention of carrying the weight of the responsibility for this interaction on behalf of the obvious novice who sat in front of her. So she chose to remain silent.

An oblivious waitress sprung to Myka’s rescue. “Can I get you anything?” she asked, with a dull, monotonous voice that could have stopped Armageddon with its apathy.

Helena smiled and shook her head stiffly; Myka asked for water; and the lacklustre intruder left.

Myka felt that her nerves were getting the better of her. Her palms were sweaty and her knee was jerking involuntarily, and her voice of reason was begging her to abandon this ill-advised adventure. _Apologise and go home and leave all this be_ , it kept telling her in her mind, again and again and again, like the loyal friend of a Jane Austen protagonist. So Myka was quite surprised that when she opened her mouth, what came out was, “I’ve never done this before.”

While Myka was surprised, Helena wasn’t. The dark-haired woman didn’t flinch or twitch or move a muscle in neither disgust nor sympathy, and Myka didn’t know what to make of the complete and utter lack of response. If she were to be honest – so far, this meeting felt like a _really_ bad date.

Helena narrowed her eyes and enquired with a cold smile, “You’ve never met someone for a drink after work?”

Myka chortled softly and shook her head. This was not going to plan. And as she sat there, she tried to think what the plan actually was, and it just got her frustrated, because Myka’s plan was to find someone she could fall into bed with, someone who would want her as much as she wanted them, someone who would enjoy her body, who would let Myka enjoy theirs, someone who would fuck her and be fucked by her, because her partner did none of those things anymore; because her partner hadn’t had an inkling of physical interest (or any other interest) in Myka in near-as-damn-it five years.

_To hell with the plan_ , she thought. “I’ve never met an attractive woman for a drink after work on the premise that—“Myka spoke curtly and stopped herself before she said something out loud that would shock someone; and if not Helena, surely she would shock herself.

Helena looked into her mug for a moment, then back up at Myka and licked her lips. “You can relax, darling, you’re doing fine.”

Myka’s mind raced at the implication of Helena’s response: this was not Helena’s first affair. Either that, or Helena wanted Myka to think this wasn’t her first affair. Myka based this on the assumption that had this been Helena’s first, she would have said ‘I haven’t either’, because that’s what most people would have said. So either Helena had done this before, or she would like Myka to think she had.

The third option was, Myka’s critical analysis of the facts and assumptions suggested after a quick, calming breath, that Helena wasn’t ‘most people’.

Across the table from the vortex of relentless enquiry and conflicting morals that was Myka, Helena was an island of calm. While not a compromising woman, Helena did not lack compassion. She had recalled the first time she had embarked on an affair, how nervous she had felt upon her first illicit meeting. She recalled the second time as well, and how she had been even more nervous than the first, because it was then that she knew that an affair was an inevitability, and the acts she knew were to follow had severe and long-lasting consequences.

Since then, many lovers have come and gone, and Helena’s preferences and expectations were set. She was seeking a simple affair, one void of emotional baggage but with a short and steep learning curve. As such, the lover she required would need to take their affair in their stride, keeping up with Helena’s sexual appetites with as little angst and anxiety and nervousness as possible.

Was the woman across from her likely to be that person?

She could see Myka getting flustered and tongue-tied across from her, and she felt for Myka, even without knowing how come a woman of such outstanding beauty wound up in a marriage that would leave her seeking physical gratification elsewhere.

In spite of all the evidence pointing to the contrary, and for an odd, inexplicable reason, Helena decided to dismiss the anxiety and nervousness she was witnessing in Myka. There was something about Myka, about her eyes, about the words of the ad she had published that made Helena curious. _Had this been any other person_ , she admitted to herself, _I probably would have left by now_.

And despite having decided not two minutes previous to not carry the weight of the conversation; despite every past experience she had had that led her to deduce that Myka was unlikely to be an angst-free affair, she decided to give her a chance. She leaned forward and reached her hand to touch Myka’s arm reassuringly. “Tell me, then,” she suggested with a smile that was less aloof and more warming. “Why poetry?”

And it was with that one, simple question that Myka’s rattling mind was silenced. Helena had, apparently, possessed the power few people in Myka’s life had. Helena managed to ask the right question at the right time, a question that was akin to a password for unlocking her serenity.

The impact on Myka was instantaneous: her face relaxed, her eyes brightened. She leaned forward with a soft smile, and Helena could do little but smile back, because Myka, suddenly, was breath-taking.

“I think poetry is the only form of art which purposefully leaves its consumer with more questions than answers,” Myka articulated her belief, a rehearsed response from the depth of her personal manifesto about the written and spoken word, a response she knew would be a conversation starter for the kind of literary biased individual she sought.

Helena quirked a brow. Beautiful _and_ sharp, she thought. “Do explain,” she smirked at the woman opposite, whose frantic, woeful eyes turned deep, inquisitive and challenging.

Myka returned a smile and took a breath as she contemplated which parts of her manifesto she should share next.

* * *

For the two hours that followed, the pretence that brought Myka and Helena’s together seemed to have not existed. Helena challenged Myka on her fondness for postmodern writing and Myka challenged Helena on her obsession with the cultural ramifications of the industrial revolution, as well as her refusal to accept graphic novels as a form of literature.

All too soon, Myka’s phone alerted her that time was getting on and she had a train to catch.

Helena managed to catch a glimpse of Myka’s screen which noted that the penultimate train home was due to depart in less than 40 minutes. “Where do you need to get to?” Helena asked, in the natural, friendly flow their conversation had adopted.

Myka almost answered without thinking, but tensed. “Are we going to be…” she hesitated, “do you want to know where I live?”

Helena, who all but forgot what Myka was like in the first 15 minutes of that evening, was reminded of the nerves, the discomfort, the unease Myka wore when she first approached Helena.

Helena answered with a small, slow shake of the head. “Best not at this stage,” she said with her eyes looking deep into Myka’s. “Out of town, though, I gather?”

Myka nodded firmly. “I’m on the commuter rail out of North Station,” she volunteered, “and this time of night trains only leave once an hour, and there’s just over an hour till the station closes, so...”

Helena got up with a gentle nod and a smile “Let’s get you on your way, then.”

They put on their coats in silence, each picking up her belongings, flowers included, and made their way to the door. Helena opened and held the door for Myka to walk out, with a gentlemanly bow of the head.

“Thank you,” Myka said and huffed a small laugh. “A little chivalry goes a long way?” she attempted banter.

“Indeed,” Helena walked up towards her. Facing each other while standing saw them acknowledge the few inches of height Myka had over Helena. “What some call chivalry other call civility,” she bantered back and gestured towards the empty street that would lead them to the T and end this odd, stressful, wonderful evening.

Myka wanted to ask Helena what next. There was no way she was going to let this be the end of that if Helena was still interested. Even if there wasn’t going to be an affair, there could at least be a friendship.

But the crunch of the salt under their boots was too loud to allow for any conversation or coherent thought, for Myka, anyway.

_If this was a date_ , Myka’s assertive voice was convincing her, _you would have to say something_. Myka stopped and turned to face Helena. “I’d like to see you again.”

Helena turned to face Myka. In the cold light of streetlamps Helena looked pristine, like a porcelain doll. Her smooth skin glowed in spite the raw light of LEDs, the rose tint of her cheeks matched that of her lips.Her elegant, pearl earrings dangled from exposed earlobes like ice drops, framed by impossibly shiny, black hair.

“I would like that too,” Helena said.

Myka smiled and nodded. Given how the evening started, a mutual agreement for a second meeting was not a foregone conclusion. _If this was a date_ , Myka’s assertive voice dared her, egged her on, _you would kiss her_ ; and her heart picked up its pace at the thought of kissing those rosy lips.

Suddenly, the reality of her meeting Helena hit her, the purpose for which they had arranged to meet came back to her like a lightning bolt, as did the shocking reminder of her life, of what she will be greeted with when she got back to her home, including everything she so direly missed in her marriage.

But all Myka could do was tighten her smile and continue walking to the T, because time would continue to march on, and trains would continue to leave North Station, whether or not she was on them.

When they arrived at the T, Myka asked, “When?”

“Whenever suits,” Helena answered easily, her smile giving away a hint of her interest in Myka.

They stood facing each other in a darkened corner by the entrance to the station, looking:

To Myka, Helena, with her perfect appearance and air of mystery, looked like what she had always fantasised a lover would be: an intelligent woman who knew her own mind and was not afraid to speak it, argue it, stand by it. If these tendencies also extended to the bedroom… Myka's breath hitched, because suddenly she realised she would really, really like to find out.

To Helena, Myka, stunning as she was, with her frayed nerves and understated messiness looked like one of the most interesting potential lovers she ever recalled meeting. There was so much she would like to explore with this woman, if only she got over those nerves of hers, for when she did, Myka was as charming and articulate as she was gorgeous.

Less compassionate and more practical, Helena decided to reward Myka for her brave sojourn into the extramarital. “How about I arrange dinner for us?”

Myka’s bright smile returned and Helena found herself developing a fondness for that smile already.

“If that's okay?” Myka reached out her hand to touch Helena’s arm.

And then it happened far too quickly for either of them to stop it from happening: Helena leaned forward slightly, and Myka mirrored, her arm wrapped around Helena’s upper back lightly, and Helena’s arm found its way to the small of Myka’s back. Then Helena craned her neck and touched the corner of her mouth to Myka’s cheek with a light peck, and Myka leaned into that touch because she didn't realise just _how much_ she'd craved it. And in the wake of this seemingly polite ending, a flame of need was ignited in both their minds and bellies.

“It'll be my pleasure,” Helena spoke a light whisper before she pulled away from their embrace.

“Thank you,” Myka mouthed her appreciation, the weight of the logistics of their second meeting lifted from her.

“Have a safe journey north,” Helena took a careful step back, choosing her words equally carefully. Saying ‘home’ could scare Myka off, and for all her sins, Helena did not want Myka to back down because she had already set her mind on testing whether Myka would learn to calm her nerves.

Myka took two steps back, waving a hesitant goodbye to Helena and before she could think differently, she turned into the station’s entrance and went through the turnstile that would see her back to her house in a sleepy town north of Boston.

Helena remained standing for a few moments more, considering her own investment in this venture. It has been nearly two years since she had a lover. She had had a handful of trysts, but nothing beyond a scratch that eliminated an itch. Work had taken up so much of her time in the past two years, she simply didn’t have the time or energy to maintain a lover.

Myka’s advertisement, which she had noticed by sheer chance when she accidentally opened an email that failed to be filtered into her spam folder, sparked her interest. And if Helena were to make a quick judgement by this evening, Myka made an intriguing person with whom to share a drink. Soon, she would find whether that intrigue extended to the length of a meal.

And while Helena had strict rules about fostering expectations while engaging in affairs, she felt an ache warming within her to discover how well that intrigue played with Myka in her bed.


	3. II. (52 weeks previous)

Helena arrived at the hotel first. She had hoped to get there first, but often plans had a way about them, a way to happen otherwise to what one might have preferred. Lady Luck was on her side, though, and she managed to leave her office on time and journey west, to the intersection between Highways 95 and 90, where she had arranged to meet Myka.

This would make their third meeting, and – as discussed briefly at the end of the previous one (albeit with abundance of hints and without calling their intended act by its explicit name) – this meeting was meant for them to test their compatibility and chemistry furtherfor the purpose for which they had initiated their relationship to begin with.

Helena played back the dinner they shared the week before – a long evening of enticing conversation, heated debate and an exchange of minds and opinions. _Myka could be intolerable with her self-assurance and knowledge_ , Helena thought. Yet, she found that type of an intellectual exasperating and alluring in equal measures, especially when they were so pleasing to the eye as Myka was.

But, oh, how shy Myka had become as they brought the evening to a close. Her outspoken, spirited courage vanished like shadows at twilight, unsure of how to ask Helena about meeting again, unsure of how to ask her if they were to take things forward and _actually_ commence an affair.

Of all the lovers Helena had had over the years, only a few had started this way. Firstly, only a very small proportion of Helena’s affairs had begun following an intentional pursuit of congress through advertising. Secondly, a similarly small proportion of her lovers were as tenderfooted as Myka was.

Both were deliberate choices: Helena was an efficient person and did not like wasting time in trial and error. She had a very good idea of what she liked, and trawling through ads and internet sites had proved to be a disappointment more than anything, as people rarely lived up to the expectations they set through their profiles.

As for the latter, Helena’s engagement in affairs was a selfish practice, and she would be the first to admit it. Helena had affairs to fill a specific void in her marriage, and that void was corporeal. Sure, sometimes she wanted to be romanced by her lovers, and sometimes she sought ones that also offered a certain level of companionship. But more often than not, she needed to be attracted to her lovers and they needed to be attracted to her, as mutual physical gratification was the desired outcome.

Helena preferred if there were no underlying issues to deal with in her affairs, such as communication or emotions or dynamics. She had to unravel these enough in her life, she had rather the space of physical relations remained focused on just that.

However, those who were new to the practice of stepping outside the bonds of their marriage often needed support throughout the affair. That, in Helena’s experience, tended to manifest into dependency of some sort later on – emotional, logistical, communicative and any combination thereof, which was far from gratifying for Helena.

The more she thought about it, she realised that until Myka, she hadn’t had a lover she had found through an ad who was _also_ a novice. Novices were often people she had allowed herself to be involved with because the attraction was undeniable which meant sex was passionate and stormy. At least initially. As soon as the novelty wore off, Helena had no qualms about ending her affairs, just like she would have no qualms about ending this one, should Myka not satisfy her needs.

The novices Helena did engage with, were all unplanned encounters that fired a shared, beastly and undeniable attraction in her guts and in those of her lovers’, the kind of attraction it was impossible to guarantee through an ad or an exchange of emails.

But she _was_ attracted to Myka, incredibly so, in fact, physically _and_ mentally, and it was perhaps that combination that persuaded her to make so many allowances that she wouldn’t have usually made. That was, perhaps, why Helena had taken it upon herself, at the end of their previous meeting, to provide Myka with the assurance that a third meeting was a matter of fact, should Myka want it.

Myka could barely hide her anticipation, Helena recalled. Simply at the thought of meeting her again, Myka’s smile turned lopsided and her cheeks flushed in a healthy pink. Myka sucked on her lower lip before nodding shyly, before asking Helena if she minded taking care of the logistics – again – because Myka’s schedule was ‘kind of crazy’.

Helena noted again the highly irregular concessions she had granted Myka, because she had allowed Myka to make her the initiator, the organiser. She reminded herself of another one of her rules: lovers who did not grow out of this particular dynamic quickly did not last long.

While she showered, Helena contemplated how much time she would allow for Myka to grow comfortable with their involvement and take the initiative herself; how long she would relent to Myka’s requests that Helena took the lead, should their meeting tonight be considered a success.

By the time she had stepped out of the shower, she concluded that she would let those concerns rest until after Myka arrived, until after they spent _this_ time together.

_I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt at the café_ , she thought, _might as well follow through_.

It was not long before a light knock drew her mind back to the present. Helena glanced at her phone’s screen briefly – Myka was on time. She pulled her hair up into a ponytail and turned to open the door.

Behind the door, Myka was nervous. She was nervous that someone might have seen her, she was nervous that she was about to walk into a hotel room with a stranger, she was nervous that she was about to kiss someone and have sex with them, and _goddamnit, it’s been so long since I’ve done anything_.

She tried to bat away the dozens of ‘what if’s’ that swarmed her like flies with Helena’s ground rules for the affair, ones they agreed on (or rather, ones that Myka had agreed _to_ at the end of the dinner they shared the previous week).

First and foremost: the purpose of their engagement was to achieve mutual physical satisfaction. Helena was clear with Myka that an ongoing situation whereby only one of them got off was cause for termination.

Then, there was actual conduct. They were both consenting adults, and therefore taking pleasure and game play were part of the session. Should anything not be as it should, it was up to the questioning party to raise the issue and stop what they were doing. Equally, should something more be needed, it was up to the wanting party to request it.

Lastly, Helena mentioned that should intense emotions develop, it was better that Myka was up front about those, and Helena promised she would be too, to try and minimise permanent damage to their relationships outside the affair.

Helena’s rules sounded reasonable enough and logical enough and Myka found tremendous stability in them because they brought sensible sanity to this completely insane thing she was about to do. And before her thoughts started spiralling again, the door swung open.

Helena took Myka, who stood at the door, motionless and looking harassed, in: her hair was more unkempt than unruly, her eyes twitching lightly, her lips raw – probably from being worried during her entire journey over from town.

“Hi,” she said shakily.

“Come on in,” Helena stepped in and Myka followed her into the room.

But as Helena stopped by the foot of the bed, Myka continued pacing to the opposite side of the room where the desk was, across the soft carpet that swallowed the sound of her footsteps. She stood in front of the desk for a moment, skimmed her fingers across the table top, and turned around to face her soon-to-be lover.

She smiled tensely at Helena, who looked so calm and inviting, in loose linen trousers and a yoga top. She looked every bit as stunning to Myka as she did the two other times they’d met, when Helena’s outfits were impeccably professional.

Myka’s mind was racing, mostly with comments she knew her friends would surely dish out if they ever knew about Helena, about the ad, about the other two meetings, about the hotel room they were in, about _why_ they were in the hotel room, what they were about to do. Her mind was incessantly reminding her that _this is a line I never thought myself capable of crossing_ , and – much like any action pregnant with consequences – _this is a bell that cannot be un-rung_.

She leaned against the desk, gripped the table top with both hands either side of her and tapped the pads of her fingers gently underneath it. Helena stood by the bed, cradling her own elbows, looking comfortable and natural, a stark contradiction to Myka’s taut anxiety.

They looked at each other from across the room, silent.

“How do we—“ Myka started after long minutes, but her voice betrayed her.

Helena looked at her patiently.

Myka’s gaze dropped to the carpet. She then took a breath and made a conscious choice to stop listening to the feed of commentary her mind supplied readily. “How do you we begin?” she whispered and looked back at Helena. “What do you want me to do?”

Helena huffed an uncomfortable chuckle, “ _I_ don’t want you to do anything, darling,” Helena answered almost smugly to sweeten the lie. Oh, she wanted Myka to do _things_ , but much like agreeing not to get ahead of herself with setting ultimatums and boundaries for the dynamic that’s yet to have formed between them, she did not let herself get carried away with harbouring fantasies about what it might be like to have Myka make her come just by playing with her breasts; or what it might be like to watch Myka watch her as she touched herself; or what it might be like to walk with a dull ache in her pelvis and thighs from having had Myka fuck her for hours. “What do _you_ want?”

Myka’s knuckles whitened as her grip of the table top tightened. What did Myka want? Myka wanted so much. She had spent so much time over the past five years _wanting_ , that she had stopped articulating to herself what it was that she wanted, because she knew she would never get it. It wasn’t until she had placed her ad on that website that she considered, again, for the first time in nearly half a decade, what it was that _she_ _wanted_.

So for the past few weeks, since she posted that ad and until she met Helena for the first time, she spent some time thinking about what she wanted from an affair: first and foremost, as carnal and primal as it sounded, she wanted sex. She wanted to have sex with someone who wanted to have sex as much as she did. She wanted someone who was carnal and primal like her, someone who wanted to take joy in taking pleasure, in receiving it, someone wanted to experiment. She wanted someone who _wanted_ as much as she did.

She wanted someone who wanted _her_ , too.

She had been denied all these for so long in her marriage that just _thinking_ about wanting a person who wanted _her_ just as much fired her up.

And – yes – she wanted other things from an affair, too: she wanted someone she could trust, someone who would be a professional and intellectual peer, someone she could spar with and joke and argue with; because a beautiful mind is the most powerful aphrodisiac.

But in her mind all those things were secondary to sex, to physical intimacy, to wanting and being wanted. So during their first two meetings, when Helena gave her all the other things, suddenly, Myka didn’t know how also demand the pleasure she craved, the one thing she couldn’t get from any other person in her life.

Maybe it wasn’t so much not knowing how to demand it, but simply having forgot.

Faced with Helena’s question, what it was she wanted, Myka knew that what she wanted was to kiss Helena – to feel those lips she leaned into at the end of their first meeting. Kiss her, and hold her, and feel her. Feel the swell of her breasts, feel the slope of her back, feel curve of her backside, feel how firm her thighs were as she pushed them apart, and…

Myka’s breath hitched, because she didn’t realise that her hands had let go of the desk and her right foot took a step towards Helena. It was as if her body was claiming what it wanted while Myka’s mind was busy rationalising the action, giving itself permission to step out on her wife, a wife who hasn’t touched her, who hadn’t wanted her in five years.

Now her left foot swung forward and Myka blinked, the swipe of eyelids across eyes wiping clean the slate of spiralling thoughts, leaving her focused on what was in front of her. And what was in front of her was a striking, sexy woman, with strands of black hair falling carelessly from a haphazard ponytail and smouldering brown eyes that knew damn well what it was Myka wanted, and wanted Myka to come and take it.

Myka’s hand touched Helena’s cheek and Helena’s lips parted, welcoming the inevitable touch. “I want to…” Myka started again, but it wasn’t her voice that failed her, but her lips; or rather the distance between her lips and Helena’s, as it was eliminated entirely before Myka could finish her sentence.

Instead, she moaned softly into Helena’s lips, velvety and warm and welcoming, who responded with a sharp intake of breath as she wrapped her arms around Myka’s neck, pulling her closer.

The kiss deepened all too quickly, hands skirting waistlines and travelling up to shoulders, and down to claw at hips and tug at clothing. All too quickly Helena’s shirt was flung above her head and Myka’s hands roamed her naked torso and chest and breast, and Helena hummed with every brush of fingers across her skin.

All too quickly the buttons of Myka’s work shirt were undone and the shirt was pulled down for Helena to greet the expanse of her neck and chest with licks and nips that only spurred Myka on, to take more – and her hands pushed past the waistbands of pants and underwear to feel Helena’s skin stretched over her hipbone, over toned quads and glutes, and how it softened when Myka’s fingers reached lower, to touch the back of Helena’s thigh.

All too quickly they were on top of the bed, on top of the covers, negotiating the quid-pro-quo of touching each other for the first time: when Helena cupped Myka, Myka had to do the same; and when Myka slipped an eager finger over Helena’s clit, Helena needed to part Myka’s folds; all the while kissing as if kissing was breathing and there was not enough air in the room.

With Myka’s touch focusing on the tip of her clit, Helena found it difficult to concentrate – she often became over sensitised too quickly, but Myka touched her differently. Her touch was light and slow, almost not touching. She then sped up just a little with longer swipes of her finger and Helena wanted to ask Myka to go inside, but could not bring herself to, before Myka stopped moving altogether and simply pressed the tip of her finger, applying the slightest of pressures, perfectly still, and it was Helena’s shattering that moved her against Myka’s finger, that pulsed through the whole of her with release.

Myka shattered above her, with broken breath, with relief, uncorking want that had aged in her for five years. But Myka wasn't quite finished, and Helena sensed it. She sensed the eager desperation in Myka’s breaths, the need she was finally getting fulfilled just by gliding her fingers languidly along Helena, lower and inside, Helena knew that Myka had been yearning for this touch for the longest time by the fact she exhaled pleasure the same way Helena did, and her body was tensing the same her own did.

Then Helena couldn't focus on what Myka felt anymore because Myka was pulsing and curling inside her, and Myka’s thumb was pressing against where she thought she couldn't be touched, but Myka was gentle and persistent and something tugged at Helena’s heart about Myka, something small but meaningful that made the next orgasm soft and long.

Myka couldn't quite believe that Helena was letting her touch her like that. She thought Helena would push her hand away when she angled her thumb against her clit again because Helena gasped sharply, something that - in Myka’s experience with her own partner - meant “stop”. But Helena… Helena gasped sharply and then arched up, pushed her pelvis towards Myka and then thrust gently against her hand and thumb with tiny mewls and moans.

And Myka's eyes widened at the woman beneath her who looked like her entire world was hanging on _that_ very touch at _that_ very second; and then the following second, and then the next and then the one after that, time moving at a processual pace that Helena punctuated with gasps that grew louder with momentum.

And Myka found it beautiful and breath-taking and so fucking hot, that she didn't even notice that she had started answering Helena’s thrusting with her own small thrusts, hoping that Helena didn’t come yet, because Myka was just enjoying feeling Helena so, _so_ much. More than she had imagined when she was touching herself in the guest bedroom of her own house the night before, when she was imagining what would happen tonight, when she was imagining what Helena would feel like to touch.

With every moment that passed, Helena’s movements grew smaller, sharper – increasing the accuracy and impact each contact Myka had with her sex. Her muscles hardened everywhere – gripping the bedspread with one hand and Myka’s upper arm with the other, eyelids stiffly clammed shut, her abs and thighs steeled with strain and her channel gripping Myka’s fingers inside her, feeling every tiny movement her counterpart made.

In the fleeting moment before Helena’s orgasm peaked, Myka felt how Helena wanted her to be _right there_ , where she was. It was like Helena’s taut muscles were binding them together, and Helena was not letting go.

That was all Myka needed. The thought that someone wanted her so badly they were not letting go, exploded violently within her and she exhaled loudly, masking the sob that rose within her, because in the name of all that was holy, for all her thinking and missing and wanting, Myka hadn’t come close to realising how much she’d missed feeling another woman like this, and her own body thanked her for giving it what it so desperately needed by rewarding her with an involuntary climax that felt disabling.

Myka’s collapse on top of her didn’t hinder Helena’s sheer state of pleasure triggered by the extraordinarily explosive ending to a lengthy orgasm that took her by surprise. If anything, the sudden feel of Myka’s weight on top of her, the feel of her full frame, of her breasts pushing into Helena’s belly increased the encompassing sense that her whole body had been pulled apart and put together again.

It took Helena a moment or so before she was compos mentis. Once she had her wits back about her, all she wanted was to satisfy her own curiosity about the taste of Myka’s neck, and the taste of her breasts and her nipples, and the taste of her thighs and the taste of her centre.

With the little strength she had left in her, she flipped them over and took a moment to look at Myka beneath her: she looked spent, properly spent, not even in the sexual context. She looked as though she'd just finished a 2-hour spin session or ran cross-country at full tilt, or something similarly ridiculous. She looked like she was empty and void of all energies, limbs limp at her sides, eyes shut, short breaths escaping her involuntarily.

And she looked like she was paying absolutely no attention to Helena, above her.

A part of Helena, the vain part, the part that knew _just_ how desirable she was, was a bit outraged in a British, stiff upper lip manner (and somewhere in the back of her mind she’d begun formulating the angry letter she would have surely written for not having received due attention). But then Myka stretched her neck and tilted her head further backwards to force herself to steady her breathing, and Helena’s vanity all but vanished to be replaced by the overwhelming need _to_ _taste_.

She descended upon Myka’s exposed skin, ravenous, like a vampire, touching her lips to feel warm skin and cool sweat and how they stretched and slacked when Myka breathed deeply at the feel of Helena on her. She touched her lips to feel Myka’s pulse and how fast it was.

Helena then touched her tongue to taste the salt and sweat and sweetness of Myka’s, taste the light sting of cosmetic alcohol. She moved down Myka’s neck to her chest, and then across to her shoulder, down her arm and to her side; all the while Myka yelping mutely underneath her, trying to silence whatever it was Helena was rousing in her.

Myka couldn't bring herself to analyse the sensations her body was experiencing, because analysing meant comparing and contrasting and cataloguing and she didn't want to do any of that. She just wanted to enjoy the feeling of being wanted, of having someone wanting to kiss her like that.

But then Helena closed her mouth around a patch of flesh on the side of her breast, giving it a small, faint bite and Myka’s body lurched up of its own volition.

Helena smirked around Myka’s breast, it would appear Myka was hers for the taking. Helena had planned to taste her first (well, not so much planned, as she craved), and it was rare for Helena to change her mind once she had a plan in motion, but Myka… Myka was delectable and desperate, judging by her responses, and Helena felt a need to experiment, to test what Myka liked.

And, quite possibly from the vain part in her, Helena knew that she would have time to taste Myka later. But now, Helena gauged by how Myka’s body convulsed under her mouth Myka needed to be touched, and it was up to Helena to discover how.

She reached her hand down to find Myka’s centre in concordance with the rest of her body – warm, wet and needy. She slipped first one, then two, then three fingers between her folds, coaxing even more arousal from her, coaxing louder, longer exclamations and words so broken they were but mere syllables.

Helena watched Myka, while slipping her fingers along her; watched her frame tighten, her arms reach above her head, under the pillows to find the edge of the mattress and grip it. Helena watched Myka’s heels dig uselessly into the covers only to slip down them and be pulled up again. Helena watched Myka’s torso and pelvis shoot up every time she traced a light path around Myka’s entrance, every time she dipped the tip of a digit in it.

Helena watched Myka as she slowly transformed from the buttoned-up, opinionated and well-spoken literary buff she had seen of her so far to an eager bundle of raw, primitive need; and that transformation made Helena’s smile grow wider, more wicked and more depraved.

Even though she had already established a rhythm, Helena decided to start anew. She entered Myka slowly, and watched the woman underneath her lose the ability to speak altogether. She then pulled out equally slowly, almost torturously, and took immense pleasure in observing Myka’s pelvis give chase to her hand. As she pushed in again, Helena gave in to her own need and took in one of Myka’s nipples in her mouth.

Myka was drowning in a tsunami of sensations and emotions. She was in bed with someone; someone else. Someone new. Someone who wasn’t her wife. And that someone was on her with their mouth and on top of her with their body and inside her with their fingers. She was on fire and on edge and thrilled and excited and pleasured and happy and sated and exhausted and sad and needy all at the same time.

And she couldn't stop the thoughts, those pesky, awful thoughts about how she wound up there, in a hotel room, naked, with another woman (who wasn’t her wife), from flooding her brain. Those thoughts that blamed her for breaking her vows, that shamed her for being so stupid, for being driven by selfish needs, for not being a good wife or a good mother or a good person.

In an attempt to push those thoughts away she pulled one of her hands down and reached to touch Helena’s naked body. Touching her would remind Myka of how amazing it was to touch her, and surely, those thoughts would override the others. Her fingers reached the curve of Helena’s backside, caressing, encouraging. Helena’s skin prickled at her presence and Helena acknowledged her touch with a hard suck on a nipple.

But those other thoughts were not relenting. Myka wasn’t ready to give up yet, though. She dragged her fingers up Helena’s ass, up the small of her back, interchanging fingertips and nails, up her side and her back, to her neck and into that root of the ponytail that was barely there anymore, dully dragging her fingernails against Helena’s scalp, tugging lightly at those rich tresses, pressing Helena to her breast.

Helena growled and sped up a little, expecting Myka to speed up towards her as well.

But Myka didn't.

Myka was too busy trying to beat her mind into submission, because Myka wanted nothing more but to let go of it all and have Helena fuck her until it was time to go.

But Myka’s mind was not letting go. And not only was it not letting go, it was tightening its grip on Myka’s muscles, on Myka’s needs, on Myka’s emotions, slowly dimming them down until Myka’s excitement was all but gone and she knew she wasn't going to come, not matter how hard Helena worked her.

Helena felt the shift in Myka’s passion, so she let go of her breast and pushed herself up so she could arrange for a different angle. She straddled Myka’s thigh and placed her own sex against Myka, placed her own thigh behind her hand, which she'd turned slightly to have better contact with Myka’s clit.

Although the touch was exceptionally pleasurable to Myka, she knew herself too well. She knew that when her mind was like that she would never be able to come, and the last thing she wanted to add to her niggling conscience was Helena's disappointment and dissatisfaction.

She released Helena’s hair and let her palm slip between her shoulder blades, and brought her other hand up to hold Helena’s arm - the one which end was inside her - and squeezed it softly, stilling it.

Helena flicked her hair over her shoulder, so she could look at Myka. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked.

Myka smiled uncomfortably. She didn't want Helena to stop because - Good God – what Helena was doing felt amazing. But she also knew that Helena could wind up having to touch her for a long time, with no guarantee of a happy ending. And in Myka’s experience (with her own partner), that led to disgruntlement. “I…” she started with a breath of discomfort, “I'm not going to come,” she finished with a whisper.

Helena looked at Myka, still slowly moving against her, inside her, attempting to measure what it was that she saw in those green eyes, and considered what she was willing to do about it. Helena knew, from her own experience, that not every sexual encounter surmised in a climactic supernova or a grand finale. Helena also knew that there was great joy, and equally great sex to be had, even without orgasms.

Question was, Helena pondered as she slowed her movements, did Myka know that.

“I rather like touching you like this,” Helena said, still thrusting lightly against Myka, “I don't particularly mind if you don't come,” she said and bit her lower lip, as the notion of a longer, hotter engagement with Myka made her even wetter. “So long as you enjoy it too.”

Myka felt Helena's arousal on her thigh, felt Helena’s fingers shifting inside her, and felt a small, distant spark that could mean she would be able to build herself up again. She released what little air she had left in her lungs and squeezed Helena’s arm while bucking up against it - once. Twice. Three times.

And then she stopped.

“I am…” Myka breathed again. “I’m enjoying…” she choked on the words and closed her eyes, ashamed of allowing herself to feel pleasure, let alone pleasure with someone else, “so much,” she whispered again. “It's just…” she pulled back with a breath, “I think it might be too much for me,” she looked up at Helena, “for one time.”

Helena nodded once and gently pulled out from Myka, not dropping her gaze.

“I'm sorry,” Myka said quietly.

“You've nothing to be sorry about,” Helena said and laid on her back, next to Myka.

They laid in silence for a few minutes, until Helena got up to extract the covers from under them to cover them both.

The silence was too awkward for Myka to bear. She turned her head to look at Helena, who looked like she was napping: one hand casually across her belly, the other casually over her head. Myka regarded her for a long moment, her chiselled cheekbones, her roman nose, the strong curve of her brow. Helena was statuesque. The combination of her complexion free of makeup and the pale lighting in the room made her look like she was made of alabaster, and Myka wanted to touch her again, but then felt awkward having been the one to stop them touching, and then ashamed for wanting so much all the time and then guilty, and on and on it went.

“Did I disappoint you?” Myka asked despite herself, because her experience with her partner suggested this question to be a moot beginning to a non-conversation. If it were Myka’s partner there, and not Helena, and Myka would have asked the question, her partner would have frozen, become defensive and then clammed up, leaving Myka none the wiser about what had happened, and whether she could remedy the situation.

With her partner, Myka would not be able to have this sort of conversation because of who they had each become in their relationship: Myka, articulate and observant, who preferred to deal with things head on; and Giselle, withdrawn and stilted, who made everything her own fault, but preferred to do nothing about any of it.

But the majestic tribute to the female form beside her _was not_ her partner. And Myka had always assumed that there were _other_ dynamics to intimate relationships out there, and she promised herself that if she ever did find herself having an affair, she would test that assumption. And given that sex was to be a big part of her budding relationship with Helena, she and Helena should be able to talk freely about it.

Helena’s relaxed expression turned into a small smile. “And why would you disappoint me?” she answered with a question without having moved.

“Well, I…” Myka started and stopped, looking for the right words, “I stopped… us,” Myka continued, “I stopped you touching me.”

Helena opened her eyes and turned her head to face Myka. “Far from it,” she said with a smile, but Myka’s gaze was inquisitive and unrelenting and Helena just knew that the question Myka had asked was one borne of years of sexual misunderstandings Myka had suffered with her sexual partners (and possibly the answer to how come such an astonishingly stunning woman was seeking her pleasures outside the confines of her marriage). So she took a breath. “I will be blunt in some of my assumptions,” she said directly, “for which I apologise in advance.”

Myka nodded slowly.

“People tend to begin affairs for two reasons, Myka. They are either bored with their lives or are physically unsatisfied,” Helena spoke, and to Myka it sounded a bit like the beginning of a lecture. And while Myka was not in the mood to be patronised, she was curious to hear what hurtful assumptions Helena had made, assumptions so bad that she felt she ought to apologise for them before speaking up. So she nodded again. “Having had the pleasure of your company twice already and then this evening, I do not believe you to be bored with your life. You have a job which appears to fulfil you and offer you ample challenge and growth, you have interests and hobbies which keep you stimulated, and from the conversations we had, it feels to me like you have found a great deal of suitable outlets for your evident superior intellect.”

Myka narrowed her eyes slightly, not sure if she was supposed to thank Helena for the compliment. But Helena continued before Myka even had the chance to draw breath.

“Yet I would imagine your love life is rather dull for your taste,” Helena spoke with the same, borderline-preaching tone. “Married to your partner for round about a decade, and the last time you engaged in some form of physical intimacy would have been a good few years ago.”

Myka's eyes narrowed further.

“Intimacy between you and your partner, these days, means curling up in front of the telly with a cup of hot chocolate after putting your youngest to bed, who's…” Helena paused to think, “six months old?” this was the only time it had appeared as though Helena was asking Myka’s confirmation of a fact; but her pace indicated she needed none. “Most of your conversations revolve around household maintenance, what the kids ate and when. Home life is but a simple, white-picket fence routine in a leafy suburb of polite smiles, of mowing the lawn and neighbourhood watch and PTA meetings,” Helena looked Myka dead in the eye for a solid minute of striking silence.

Myka was perfectly still, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared.

Helena read her expression for anger. “I did warn you I would be blunt,” she said, “I rarely issue apologies twice.”

Myka had to think for a moment why Helena would be reminding her that she apologised already, before she felt her expression and the tension in her jaw and neck and shoulders. So she drew a sharp breath and stretched her neck before sighing heavily, all the while Helena’s words echoed in her mind. It wasn’t the content of Helena’s assumptions that angered Myka, but the fact those assumptions were _so accurate_.

For the first time in Myka’s life, someone read her so painfully precisely, and that felt foreign to Myka, who spent her life reading others so well, but rarely being understood herself.

Not only that, she was read so plainly, quickly and flawlessly by a woman she hardly knew, a woman who hardly knew her. That left Myka outraged - that assumptions could be made about her so easily, as if she were a mere statistic, a faceless number in some academic study about infidelity. Myka closed her eyes and bit her lips together to release the anger that built in her again. “You don't need to apologise again,” she said, “I already accepted.”

“Yet, you appear to be utterly incensed,” Helena restrained a cocky grin, knowing she hit every single nail on the head.

“I suppose I am,” Myka said, trying to make heads and tails of what being read by Helena made her feel. Was she really angry or was she relieved that someone understood her, finally, after all these years?

“How correctly did I portray you there?” Helena rolled over, so her whole body was turned towards Myka’s. She couldn't help but grin triumphantly.

If this was any other situation, meaning, if she weren't in bed, naked with this woman, Myka would have been fuming. But she _was_ in bed and naked with this woman, and not ten minutes ago they were having rather great sex. “Four months old. The baby’s four months old. And there’s just one of him. No other kids, so no PTA,” Myka said and began smiling, “yet,” she added as her anger dissipated, leaving her relieved. For the first time since becoming so lonely in her marriage, she felt someone understood _why_ she was in bed with another woman who wasn’t her partner, and why they were there for the sole purpose of having sex.

And that acknowledgement by someone who was a stranger felt like the biggest validation Myka ever received, the biggest and first of its kind, and – for the first time in the five long years in which she had tirelessly fought for her marriage – it made her feelings legitimate.

Suddenly, Myka’s life in her suburban, Stoneham picket-fence home, a life that wore her down, that jaded her, that took all she had in her and gave her nothing in return, felt like a life she was living on someone else’s behalf until they got back from a business trip, and being in a hotel bed with a stranger was her real life.

“Ha!” Helena exclaimed before chuckling lightly and Myka was pulled back to reality, laying naked next to one of the most condescending and annoyingly arrogant and people she had ever met.

“You know that gloating isn’t an attractive feature,” Myka lied through her teeth, because Helena wore gloating _so_ well, it pissed her off even more.

“You know that's not true,” Helena said, reading Myka again, as she brought her hand into Myka’s hair and pulled her in for a demanding kiss. “Just like I know that the next time we meet you will let me touch more than you did today,” Helena spoke softly into Myka’s lips, sharing breath with her.

“And how do you know that?” Myka asked as she pulled away from Helena’s blistering lips, angling herself above Helena.

“Because you want me to,” Helena breathed as she fell to her back, offering her neck and chest to Myka’s mouth.

Myka made the most of the freedom Helena granted her over her body and explored nearly every inch of it with her fingers or lips or tongue, spurred on by sweeping touches, scrapes and squeezes Helena gifted Myka’s flesh and curves in return.

For nearly an hour, while she was learning that Helena’s body was pretty much the closest thing to a wonderland she had ever experienced, Myka's mind was only in tune with her actions. It was focused on the noises Helena made, on the different textures her skin adopted, the extent to which her muscles twitched, the different breaths she released.

Myka's body felt alive again after years of dormancy, responding to the body beneath her own, buzzing and humming with sexual energy. Helena was free with her body, she was wanting and needing and fearless in expressing both. _This is heaven_ , Myka thought, having not experienced physical intimacy like this in years. Since before she met her partner, even.

After a while, Myka knew that Helena was unlike any lover she had ever had – not that Myka had so many to compare to. She also couldn’t compare the experience she was having with Helena to any of her past sexual experiences. The thrill from her time with Helena felt more exhilarating, even though it was slower, meticulous and methodical.

Myka put it down to the fact that she was older and more evenly-tempered with her intimacy: she felt she could be less eager and less frenzied with her touch, yet no less sensuous and sensual. That combination made for some extraordinary excitement that silenced the self-blame and worry and awkwardness.

It was only towards the end of that hour, when Myka caught the time on the bedside clock in the corner of her eye that her mind kick-started again, sputtering torturous guilt and shame and righteousness-filled self-chiding, like an old, trusty generator. She slowed down her hands and her lips on Helena’s skin, minute by minute, gradually reducing the heat of her touch.

“Have you noticed the time?” Helena purred as she pulled Myka up towards her, to reward her dedicated fastidiousness with an attentive kiss.

As Helena bewitched her with her kiss, nibbling on her lips that were already sensitive with the exploration of Helena’s body, and despite her mind attempting to subdue her again, Myka knew that she’d tasted something with Helena, something powerful and vital and addictive, something she found she was already reluctant to let go of. So much so, in fact, that Myka didn’t care how pushy she’d come across. She wanted to see Helena again.

She knew it was more than that. She _needed_ to see her again.

Myka smiled against Helena’s lips. “You'll have to stop doing that assumption thing at some point,” she muttered, “because it may _really_ piss me off,” she finished, with the unfounded confidence that she would be stung by the irritating arrogance of the naked woman beneath her for days to come.

Helena chuckled and wrestled Myka to her back. “Perhaps it is up to you to show me up,” she ground her pelvis into Myka’s as she pushed both of Myka’s hands into the mattress, flanking her head, “and put me in my place,” she gritted as Myka fought against her hold.

Myka started laughing after a few moments of idle struggle. If this was all Helena had, Myka could overthrow her easily, but Myka didn’t want to reveal her hand too quickly. The playful look in Helena’s eyes suggested to her that this was a game, an exciting game, for sure… But a game for another day, because it was nearly 8:30 and Myka hadn't planned to stay the night. Her cover story, which involved meeting a new mentor, landed her back home no later than 10pm, and she still needed to go for a run that got her sweaty for a whole bunch of _other_ reasons...

“Same time next week?” Myka asked, her confidence, oddly, unwavering.

Helena flashed a wicked and satisfied grin. She hadn't expected Myka to be so self-assured at this point, and a glimpse of a bold Myka was the most pleasant surprise that night. “I have an early flight to catch the next morning.”

“I can arrange someplace near Logan,” Myka offered pragmatically.

Helena could not contain the surprise at Myka’s resolute daring and cocked a surprised eyebrow, replying, “Sure.” Given everything she had seen and felt of Myka, she assumed it would take her considerably longer to warm up to the having an affair, to initiating, to handling logistics. Helena grossly disliked being wrong but, oh, being wrong that time could not have pleased her more.

“I'll email you details,” Myka smiled up at her captor like the cat who got the cream.

Helena studied her for a moment from where she was, above her new lover, holding her down. After a nervous beginning to their evening, the guilt-ridden intermission and angry climax, Helena saw in Myka the person who intrigued her in the café when they first met - a strong-willed, confidant woman who knew her mind. And as that person began to eclipse the worried, apprehensive Myka who entered the room a handful of hours ago, the pesky thoughts that troubled Helena earlier, that seeing a person who was still so obviously conflicted about having an affair was a dire mistake, were all but assuaged.

Helena had suspected that if Myka let go of the guilt and the shame and the decades of social programming she had been subjected to about marriage and fidelity (and, by force of that, infidelity; all of which steered her towards a monogamous, faithful existence with the one person she chose to marry), Helena knew that Myka would make a splendiferous lover.

“Next week it is,” Helena said with a smile and dismounted Myka, who smiled back at her.

Myka sat up and collected her clothes from around the bed. She turned around to look at Helena, who was leaning against the headboard, fiddling with the remote control for the TV. She looked somewhere between careless and oblivious. Myka spent another minute watching her, so comfortable in her nudity, in the hope she’ll notice Myka who had a question to ask - to no avail. “Do I say thank you?” Myka asked.

Helena paused and lifted her gaze to return Myka’s meaningful stare. _What an odd thing to say_ , she thought as she considered the reasons Myka would feel the need to express _gratitude_. “You are most welcome,” she decided to answer in the end, and Myka beamed at her from the foot of the bed.

* * *

In the parking lot, after Myka shut the car door behind her, she sat still for what could have been an hour, holding on the steering wheel at 10 and 2, white knuckled, staring into the shrubs in front of her car. She felt at the top of the world and at the pit of despair simultaneously.

She then turned NPR on and all the way up, because something had to drown the tolling of the bell that could never be un-rung, drown the not-knowing whether to hate herself for cheating or love herself for giving herself the release she hadn’t had for the past five years.

Later, when she got to her gym in Woburn, north of Boston, she switched the drone of the radio with the drone of haus and trance music that accompanied her run. She needed the run (even though it was a treadmill run, which she hated) to silence her mind from nagging her. She needed the run to tire her body, to purge it of the need to touch, to be touched, because two and half hours with Helena were nowhere near enough to satisfy the days and weeks and months and _years_ of  solitary yearning Myka had endured.

It was just after 10pm when Myka arrived at her Stoneham home. Her partner and son were fast asleep. She crept around the house, tidying, cleaning dried up bits of baby food from the counter and table-top and floors, loaded the dishwasher, put a wash on, placed pots and pans and plates and books and toys and pillows back where they belonged.

Most days, cleaning and tidying helped Myka sort out the mess in her mind and her heart. But that evening the mess in her mind was too big for tidying to undo.

The clock turned midnight when she gave up on achieving absolution through housework, so she took a long, hot shower and went to sleep in the guest bedroom.


	4. III. (51 weeks previous)

Helena re-packed her carry-on suitcase and went around the hotel room to check nothing was left behind. She checked she had her locket on her, she made sure her purse and laptop where in her shoulder bag and she headed out of the room and down to reception to check out.

On the way down from the third-floor suite she took in the quaintly decorated corridors of the Winthrop Beach Hotel, where Myka had booked them. This particular place would not have been at the top of Helena’s list of places to stay, but it most certainly did the trick.

She handed the key back to the receptionist who asked her if she had had a satisfying stay.

Helena thanked the receptionist graciously, and once out the hotel and inside her cab, she closed her eyes and let the previous night’s satisfaction wash over her:

 

_Myka was in the room when Helena had arrived. In fact, Myka had checked Helena in already – the room was in Helena’s name – and all Helena had to do was climb up three and a half flights of stairs to be greeted by Myka, sitting by the window, still in her work clothes, answering emails on her phone._

_“Hey,” Myka greeted her as she walked in._

_“Hello,” Helena answered and closed the door behind her._

_“I only just got here a couple of minutes ago,” Myka said while typing, “I’ll be done in a moment, so if you want to do anything…” Myka nudged her head to the shower._

_Helena looked at how comfortable Myka looked in the situation – such stark contrast to the week before. She turned to tend to her suitcase, taking out her toiletry bag, her night clothes, her phone charger and placing them on top of the side table; all the while stealing glances at Myka who was absorbed in her phone, so relaxed. More relaxed than Helena had ever seen her. And in her relaxed state, Helena found Myka mesmerising with her precise movements, magnificent with her expressive eyes._

_Then Myka’s fingers stilled and her gaze froze as she stared at the phone for a handful of seconds before placing it face down on the table. She turned her gaze to Helena. She looked a bit more nervous than she did a moment ago. “Sorry, I…” she started and trailed off._

_“No need, darling,” Helena placed herself at the bottom of the bed with a small smile._

_Myka stared at her while biting on her lower lip, restless._

_Helena touched the tip of her tongue to her teeth, looking at Myka looking back at her, challenging Myka to come to her. Helena was playing a game with Myka, waiting to see if Myka would step into the role of initiator, of dominator, if Helena stepped back. Helena was also playing with her sheer want to have Myka take her, sans angst, sans desperation. Helena wanted Myka to take her because it was Helena that Myka wanted._

_For the two long minutes they stared at each other, Helena contemplated whether it was too soon to play this game with Myka. She contemplated whether Myka had spent all her assertion arranging the hotel (if one could call it that, more of an inn, if Helena were to be honest), and had none left in her to assert herself over Helena._

_But then Myka got up, and the want in her eyes assured Helena that she was about to be taken._

_Myka sat down next to Helena, two feet away between them. She smiled to herself for a moment, looked down at the carpet, looked at her socked feet, looked at Helena’s. She thought about what had happened the last time she met Helena, thought about what was about to happen. It struck her that unlike any other sexual partner she had had,_ this _encounter, her second time with Helena, was probably going to be the most free of all encounters she had: there wouldn’t be a need for Myka to check with Helena that_ ‘this is okay’ _, that_ ‘this isn’t too fast’ _, that_ ‘this isn’t too hard’ _or_ ‘too soft’ _or too_ whatever _._

_If there was one thing she had learnt from their previous encounter, it was that the sole purpose of the both of them being in that room there and then, was so that they could undress each other, touch each other, pleasure each other; give their bodies to the other to be enticed and aroused and set alight. And Myka wanted to undress and touch and pleasure so badly. She wanted to entice and arouse Helena so badly. She wanted to be undressed and be touched and be pleasured and be taken almost twice as much._

_And although that concept, the idea of coming together purely to scratch an itch, still felt a long way away from a habit to Myka, she knew that submitting to it would be the best way to make it into one._

_She thought about Helena’s prophecy the previous week – that she would want Helena to touch her more, longer. As much as it angered her that Helena was correct, she would have gladly admitted it. And if she could only find the words and the courage, she would have asked Helena to touch her already._

_Instead, she turned her head and looked at Helena’s lips while wetting her own, before leaning in and kissing Helena who pulled Myka towards her. Myka fell into Helena and they fell back onto the bed, Myka settling on top of Helena, without hesitation or a moment’s thought._

_Once on the bed, Helena busied herself with Myka’s clothes as Myka did with Helena’s; jackets, shirts, trousers, under-things – peeled and cast aside while fingers lent themselves to skin, to flesh, to ticklish areas and erogenous zones. Lips were preoccupied with lips and curves and slopes and expanses, and teeth were with earlobes and necks and tensing muscles._

_Myka gave in to her need to touch first. She pushed Helena back to the bed. One of her hands went straight to Helena’s sex, and her mouth made a beeline to Helena’s chest and abdomen._

So little preamble required _, was the last thought that passed through Helena’s mind before Myka’s insistent touch whisked thinking away from her, and expert fingers and genius lips were building her up beautifully._

_Myka, on her part, was enjoying touching Helena oh, so much. After all, the previous week, touching Helena was all it took to make Myka come, and that haunted Myka since. She had always enjoyed sex much more if she was giving and receiving at the same time, but having come from touching someone alone – that was new._

_After having explored Helena’s body the previous week, having felt how gratifying it was for her to rouse another woman, she plotted to experiment: what would she feel if she didn’t just make Helena come, but kept touching, instead? What if she paused and restarted every so often, so Helena didn’t get close enough to coming. What would that feel like for her?_

_So having slid two fingers along Helena’s slit and nipped at her breast for a short while, she stilled her fingers for a brief moment while kissing her way up Helena’s sternum. Before Helena had a chance to protest, Myka placed the base of her index finger atop Helena’s clit and kissed her deeply._

_And after a few minutes of that, Myka paused again only to enter Helena with one finger and bite on a nipple a short minute later._

What an unexpected surprise _, Helena managed to think after the third time Myka stopped short of driving her towards a climax, but rather, started anew. Given all she had seen and felt of Myka so far, she did not expect Myka to be so playful so quickly._

The cab stalled outside the express check in gate at Logan, and Helena made her way in, past security and into the executive lounge.

There was a man (judging by the trousers and the footwear and the hands that held up a broadsheet) sitting in an armchair, reading said broadsheet. The top of him was completely hidden behind it.

Helena placed herself on the sofa next to the man. “Good morning, William.”

The man rustled the paper away, revealing a handsome, crisp and clean-shaven face, which lit up when he noticed the elegant woman sitting next to him. “Helena, dear!” he said. “Given the news, I didn’t think I’d see you until lunch,” he smiled broadly at her.

Helena cocked her head at William. He looked a bit younger than her, probably because of his neat, chiselled features, the kind that didn’t know what a five o’clock shadow was. She knew exactly what news he was referring to, but she had every intention of honouring their life-long tradition of banter. Since they met at university some twenty-so years ago, they had always championed verbal sparring. “And what news is that?” Helena would be damned if she didn’t play into his trap only to leave him wriggling in it by the time she was done.

“Dearie me,” William signed dramatically, “my wife chooses to be coy with me,” he folded his paper expertly and leaned over the armrest to place a peck on her cheek, “and my wife knows how I adore her timidity. News of your new lover, of course,” he finished with a whisper.

“And who was it this time who broke the news to you, husband?” Helena challenged with a smile.

“Mr. Diamond had divulged that he was not the one delivering you to the airport this morning, which suggested to me you were otherwise and elsewhere engaged,” he answered, still leaning over his armrest, his face mere inches away from Helena’s.

“Oh, my dear Wolly,” Helena reached her palm to his cheek and gave him a loving caress, “how wonderful it is that you know me so well,” she leaned forward and kissed his lips lightly.

“Do tell, dear,” he asked her, still smiling. “It’s been such a long time since you kept a lover. Do I know him?”

Helena smirked.

 

_Helena was also surprised because she had expected Myka would take her quickly, like she had done the week before. ‘Expected’ was, perhaps, the wrong term. Helena_ assumed _Myka would take her quickly, because Helena_ wanted _Myka to take her quickly. Helena, who had not had a lover in nearly 18 months, had pent up anticipation of her own which needed to be relieved – much like the relief she had noticed in Myka the previous week._

_And relief, to Helena, meant a quick orgasm first, and games later._

_Or so she thought._

_Myka’s experimenting awakened something in her, beyond the pure need for a climax. It reminded Helena that there was more excitement to be had beyond just being fucked, and she let herself relish the sensations of her body being taken through its paces. Myka granted her a few moments at a time of one sensation and then fingers touched her differently, lips touched her differently, sometimes teeth in play, sometimes tongue; sometimes fingers inside, sometimes out; and then change again. And then again. And again, and again…_

_Until she couldn’t anymore._

_“Myka,” she gasped and pulled Myka’s face up to hers. “Enough,” she breathed her command, and Myka nodded before diving to kiss Helena’s neck while keeping the pressure inside her. Helena needed to feel all of Myka, feel the person who was doing this to her body. Her fingers reached to span Myka’s soft waist, and trailed down to the curve of her backside. Then around to the contours of her hips, and up again to feel the dip in the small of her back and how delicate it felt in contrast to Myka’s toned upper back muscles. Then up still to the nape of her neck, where long curls were damp with sweat, and back down to the supple, rounded swell of her breasts._

_The feel of Myka reminded Helena just how much she had preferred women to men, how much she’d missed a woman’s touch, a woman’s feel; and then she came long and hard keeping Myka against her, on top of her, inside her._

_When Helena’s breathing began to settle, Myka lifted her head to look at Helena beneath her. Helena opened her eyes slowly, her breathing still laboured, her muscles still twitching at the feel of Myka’s hand between her legs._

_Myka was smirking above her, self-satisfied. Myka was content and proud of herself at that moment, because she hadn’t ever considered how amazing it would feel to have Helena order her to make her come, and how amazing it would feel to comply, to succeed._

 

“Of course I would not, silly old man that I am,” William whispered excitedly, “because it’s a her!”

“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” Helena answered sweetly.

 

_It was Helena’s turn to be outraged by the arrogance of her counterpart. Yes, playing games was part and parcel of what she sought in her time with a lover, but for some reason, probably after the shaky start they had had the first time they met and then the previous week, Helena thought that_ she _would be the one playing the games, calling the shots. At least initially._

_So to have Myka grin at her like she did, so smug and pleased with herself, had got to her, that she wasn’t the one who played with Myka first._

_Myka’s smile faded ever so slightly, having noticed Helena’s demeanour shifting. Helena looked angry, with smouldering, darkening eyes and lips pressed tightly shut. That was not quite what Myka had hoped for at the end of her experiment. But before she had a chance to comprehend the meaning of any of it, Helena pushed her to her back and slipped between her legs._

_Myka moaned, surprised at the quick turnaround, at the feel of Helena pressing against her sex roughly, and Helena echoed a moan when she felt Myka’s arousal against her abdomen._

_“I’ve been wanting to do this for weeks,” Helena hissed softly and crawled down Myka’s body, gently pushing her legs apart and slipping her tongue between her folds._

_Myka gasped then moaned again, loudly, letting slip half-uttered profanities, because it had been years since she anyone tasted her. It has been so long that she had forgot how phenomenal the sensation was. It felt to Myka like it had been an age since anyone wanted to touch her like this, and a distant corner of her cognition registered that Helena said ‘weeks’, that she’d been wanting to taste Myka for_ weeks _, which suggested she wanted Myka since they first met, perhaps, and –_ God – Jesus – Oh – Helena – Fuck – Don’t stop – Don’t, doh, oh, oh _– Myka lost control of her body as Helena’s tongue and lips and teeth teased, tested and tasted every part of her centre._

_It didn’t take long for Myka to climax, but Helena didn’t stop. With less fervour and less intensity, she continued to idly kiss and nip at Myka’s labia, slipping her tongue over and across and in between._

_Helena revelled at the feeling of a woman’s body writhing beneath her again, it was exquisite. Savouring Myka’s taste on her lips was splendid. This woman, Myka, as a lover, was a reward well earned, truly worth the long wait._

_“Christ,” Myka breathed heavily above her, and Helena grinned a feral, devious grin because she was feeling Myka’s body beginning to relax in the afterglow of her climax, and Helena had absolutely no intention of letting Myka relax after what she had done to her. Two could play the game Myka started, and Helena reckoned it was time to show Myka her competitive side._

_Helena inhaled deeply against Myka’s centre as she laid her tongue flat on her and dragged it upwards slowly. Myka tried uselessly to mute her moan and subdue her need, but her hips were begging Helena for more, and Helena gladly supplied._

_Myka was conflicted. She was elated with the orgasm Helena had just gifted her, but she knew she needed respite. Of what she had known of herself (and she thought she knew herself pretty well), she needed a break before attempting a second pass at being touched again, let alone before attempting another climax, and things were going so well so far, Myka didn’t want last week to repeat itself._

_But Helena wasn’t giving her a break. Helena was doing the very opposite of giving her a break, because she was now –_ ah _– entering Myka, gently and slowly, with a renewed sense of purpose._

_Myka, still convinced she knew herself enough, decided that_ this would wind up nowhere _. Even when she was touching herself, second orgasms would take forever, and often needed extra help – literary, visual or of the silicone variety. Neither of these were presently available, and even if they had been, she hadn’t even begun collecting the courage to ask Helena to use them._

_So at the thought of disappointing herself and Helena, her niggling mind kicked in again, much like it did the week before, and it took hold of her nerve endings, of her emotions, and started quelling them, one at a time._

_It was just then that Helena found Myka’s sweet spot, which, as it turned out, was a kill switch for all of Myka’s cognitive processes. Her body arched up, centre grinding into Helena, who moaned deeply against her – the vibrations of which shot through Myka’s entire body and a high pitched, helpless whine fell from her lips._

_Helena’s eyes grew wide, taking in every detail of the woman she was pleasuring, and she locked her mouth in place, and hummed (literally hummed) against Myka._

_Myka’s inhibitions were gone. Her conscience was gone. Her consciousness was nearly gone too, the more Helena pressed inside her, pressed outside her, the more she did whatever it was she was doing, the higher she pushed Myka._

_The release that followed was loud and painful and grand and Myka kept riding the aftershocks long minutes after Helena’s mouth left her._

_When Myka finally fell limp against the bed, Helena crept up her body, trailing kisses and bites from her centre all the way up to her lips. She kissed Myka chastely through her own satisfied smile, expecting Myka to be too exhausted to respond. But Myka kissed her back hungrily, pulling Helena to her, stealing Helena’s breath._

_“I really want to show you up, Helena, but I’m not sure I have it in me to go again,” Myka sighed softly, “I still have to drive back to Stoneham tonight.”_

_“That’s perfectly alright, darling,” Helena whispered, choosing to ignore how casual Myka had been about her place of residence. “I, too, better not exhaust myself completely.”_

_“Right,” Myka remembered and dragged the palms of her hands up Helena’s sides, to feel her body again, “early flight.”_

_Helena relaxed into Myka’s touch and moved up a bit so that Myka’s hands could fully hold her breasts. The prone woman did not need to be asked twice, and reached questing hands, questing fingers, to tease soft flesh and hard nipples._

_“Where to?” Myka husked, taking her own lip between her teeth, looking at Helena who entered trance-like state, hypnotised by Myka touch._

_“New York.”_

_“Business,” Myka rounded Helena’s breasts with her fingers, “or pleasure?” she closed fingers and thumbs on each nipple and pinched._

_“Business,” Helena gasped and pulled her knee up, thrusting faintly against Myka’s thigh._

_Myka growled. She was beginning to realise_ just _how much Helena enjoyed breast play. “Sounds exciting,” she rubbed her thumbs slowly, in small circles on top of Helena’s sensitised nipples._

_“Not at all,” Helena pushed herself up and into Myka, so the contact she had with her hands and her thigh was fuller. “Just a board meeting with my huh-husband,” she was now lost in the act, in the sensation of being touched_ everywhere _._

_“Husband?” Myka failed to curb her surprise, but managed to keep her touch on point._

_“I – ah – I assumed you knew,” Helena’s eyes were half lidded and she was thrusting faster as Myka was squeezing her breasts, keeping hard friction on those nipples._

_“I assumed you were ---“ Myka started, but Helena was coming again, from having her breasts played with, and it was breath-taking to watch._

“Come now,” William leaned back, “surely there is something you can divulge to satisfy my curiosity.”

“If I didn’t know any better, darling, I’d say you were jealous,” Helena threw a light jab at her husband. “We both know green is not your colour,” she smiled at him.

“This isn’t jealousy, Helena, this is pure voyeurism. I am seeking vicarious gratification.”

Helena darted William a concerned look. “Everything alright with Liam?”

“He’s away on some training mission,” William waved his hand dismissively.

“Poor soul,” Helena sighed.

“Thank you for the sympathy. I am deprived of his company for two more weeks!”

“I know that you know that I was referring to your poor malestress, working his delightful body into a wreck in some godforsaken corner of the Appalachians. I don’t pity _you_ one bit, darling.”

William took on a thoughtful expression, while considering his poor malestress (as Helena called his lover) and his exceptional physique being tested to their limits and beyond.

“Because I do believe that once over, you, as victor, will have won the spoils of indulging his every whim, tending to every scrape and bruise,” she landed a playful slap on his knee as she got up. “Would you like your tea refreshed?”

William looked up at Helena and reached his hand to hold hers. “You do know that I love you, Helena, right?”

Helena looked down at him and smiled an earnest and honest smile. “I do.”

“Truly, Helena,” he looked at her with a look that resembled pleading, “with our arrangement to one side, and our past to the other. I love you deeply and will care for you until the end of time.”

Helena brought her other hand to squeeze William’s on top of hers, and they looked at each other for a long minute. Anyone who might have caught sight of them that very minute would have assumed they were the happiest married couple on earth. And, frankly, one might have been right.

William’s eyes were crystalline azure, the colour they took when his defences vanished, when he left himself open to be read by those in front of him. That was a trait of his that Helena adored most, how easy it was for him to allow her to see him. How willing he was to let her see him. She knew he still loved her, as she did him. She’d fallen madly in love with this dashing debonair as they became the best of friends at the tender age of 19 at university. Both branded shining stars with bright futures ahead of them.

But oh, so often shining stars burn too brightly, too fast, and before long, their relationship had borne the toll of both their lives. Beyond their successes, they had coped with illness, depression and addiction, friends and family lost. They contended with failed businesses and bad career choices, fought ceaselessly over values, beliefs, how to live their lives and how to influence others’, until all that was left between them was their friendship. For some, that might not have been enough to sustain a marriage. But Helena and William treasured their friendship more than anything. It was always placed in the centre of their marriage.  

So when everything but that centre crumbled to dust, they sat down at the dinner table on the last day of the season in their Hampton holiday home. It was on that evening, a little over eight years ago that they both admitted to having had affairs, so they discussed the future of their relationship and came up with the arrangement William was referring to.

For the sake of their friendship and for the sake of all they achieved together, they chose to redefine their marriage rather than break it up: so long as their friendship was true, so long as they loved each other and cared for each other – they would stay together. In order to satisfy what they could no longer give one another, they were both allowed to keep lovers.

As she squeezed his hand, Helena recalled moments from their life together – good and bad and terrible alike. William Wolcott was boisterous as he was flamboyant, today much as he was when he was 19. He had broken her heart and mended it more times than she cared to count. She had broken and mended his an equal number, surely, if not more.

But she loved him. She cared for him. And she reckoned, even after all they had been through, even with Liam and Myka, that she always would.

“I love you too, William. I love you too.”


	5. IV. (46 weeks previous)

“How have you been this past week?” Irene asked Myka, the usual question, after they had exchanged pleasantries.

Myka exhaled and her lips stretched into a thin smile. She wondered why she hadn’t told Irene yet. She was a firm believer in therapy, otherwise she wouldn’t have been where she was at that moment. She had always believed that saying things out loud to another person whose job it was to listen without judgement was a sure way to not go crazy. Myka would always be the first to suggest therapy when friends or family went through rough times; she had been the one who insisted that her partner saw her own therapist; she had been the persuading force behind the couples’ counselling they had.

She had been seeing Irene for nearly a year, during a time where Myka was flirting furiously with her own depression, and she treasured Irene’s immense contribution to her wellbeing. Irene had been there for her more than anyone in her life was.

And yet, she hadn’t told Irene about the affair. She hadn’t told her about Helena at all.

Throughout her adult life Myka had gone through three courses of therapy, mostly to deal with her own family, or more specifically, her father, his unrealistic expectations and his ensuing, unbecoming behaviour. She had learned, through these courses, that therapy sessions were her space to be the worst and best human she can be, and then equipped her with the tools to cope with anything and anyone, not just her father.

So when things with her partner had got so very difficult, when the tools she’d collected over the years were too blunt to make an impact, when Myka concluded each of her attempts to nudge the situation resulted in making the both of them miserable, and when Myka was pushed to the brink of her ability to cope, she found Irene Frederic.

Myka didn’t like Irene at first. Irene had an aloof quality about her. Her woollen suits, how silent she could be, how still. The way she held an inquisitive gaze, the way she would quirk her brow whenever Myka spoke. Myka felt like Irene could read her mind without her needing to speak it. Sometimes, Myka thought that for Irene, getting her patients to talk was for sport, because she already knew what they were thinking. It was as if Irene could see her patients’ code and could tell where the bugs were, and the challenge _for her_ was to work her patients so that they could find the bugs themselves.

Over time, though, her fondness for Irene grew. She also realised that Irene’s method of getting Myka to find the bugs in her programme meant that Myka didn’t need to drive the thinking process anymore. Irene was driving, Myka was riding shotgun, looking inside and outside and all around, observing herself and her surroundings.

For Myka, whose mind constantly analysed and asked and enquired beyond the immediate answer, 50 minutes once a week where someone else was asking the questions granted her relief as much as they cleansed her, because those 50 minutes with Irene were the only time and place in her whole life where Myka could say out loud the things she was not allowed to say to anyone. Not even Pete. Not even Claudia.

Those were the things she could never say out loud anywhere but to Irene because they were rooted in Myka’s darkness and her struggle that by now, five years in, marred every aspect of her relationship with her partner and had already began to mar other relationships, as well.

Myka felt a stabbing pain in her side whenever she referred to Giselle as ‘her partner’, in thought or out loud. She originally chose to use ‘partner’ over ‘wife’ because she was a feminist and believed in equality (and the origins and cultural context of the word ‘wife’ supported neither agenda), but grew to use the word less and less, because, married or not, Giselle was not her partner _at all_ , and that was one of the biggest issues Myka had with her marriage.

Giselle had been fading over the past five years, so much so that Myka had barely recognised her.

Myka had always been more assertive, more decisive in their relationship, but for her own reasons (some of which Myka knew, some of which she guessed) Giselle had been initiating less, organising less, engaging less, doing less in most aspects of her life outside their marriage, and all aspects of her life with Myka. When anything involved Myka in any capacity, she didn’t organise, engage or do anything at all. She simply lost all interest.

The life Myka found herself living with Giselle, particularly over the past 18 months, was that of hard commitment, to the point it wore Myka down completely. It was a perfect illustration of how their life together was no longer a partnership, but a situation where one person was doing the majority of the heavy lifting: practically, financially, emotionally, mentally.

For these long months Myka had been doing nothing but work: either for her employer or in her house and marriage. Her entire existence had boiled down to surviving the vicious circle that was earning money to maintain a household and a marriage and a son, and then performing the maintenance to said household and marriage and son, through doing the shopping and cleaning and feeding and changing and laundry and cooking and dishes and fixing and bills and you name it, Myka did it.

Whenever Myka reflected with Irene on the past few years of her marriage, she had often described how colour had been gradually washed away from her life until it had become faded grayscale with contrasting, dark outlines. There were days that Myka felt as though she was an empty shell, a zombie, the soulless physical remains of a human being, because it had been weeks since she had had a single moment of joy. And on those occasions, she thought she would feel resentment towards Giselle, but she felt nothing. She was so void of energy, so empty of emotion, she had nothing in her for Giselle. Not resentment. Not hate. Not pity. And not love, either.

Those were the times that Myka would date her Depression, who was all too quick to pour one too many whiskeys she would then share with it and her Darkness. Those were the times Myka felt utterly alone, even though she knew she wasn’t, and the weight of her existence was so great, Myka simply let it extinguish her capacity to feel, to process emotion and sensation.

It was during one of those times, just before 2am between a Saturday and a Sunday, having just completed the sixth round of laundry that day, that she broke and posted _that_ ad on _that_ website – the one responsible for _that_ evening at the café, off Harvard Square, where she first met Helena. On that night, as she fidgeted with the wording of her profile, and pressed the button that would make it visible for her target audience. It was the knowledge that one of these days, her capacity to feel would refuse to come back online after the whiskey, that fuelled her determination to complete a task she had contemplated so many times. It was the knowledge that when her capacity to feel died, Depression and Darkness would become regulars rather than passing punters, and she would then be sentenced to live the rest of her life without colour, that made her press ‘submit’.

And in her mind, the mind of a mother and human determined to fight the deathly numbness of her dark depression with everything she had in her (which was not much), she thought that finding a lover that would give her some of her life-force back. Having a lover would mean feeling _something_. It would be a simple way to bring back a feeling she missed so much – another human being close to her; another person who she desired and who desired her, another person who wanted Myka’s body and wanted Myka to want theirs.

Myka also knew the she could not afford to slip further into depression. She had a child now, goddamnit (and the odd irony of using her son as justification for perusing an affair did not escape her). There was too much to do and see and share with her son for life to be colourless. And sex, she knew herself well enough, was a means to an end. A means to be able to keep feeling and sensing, not just the intimacy, but everything around her. And Myka wanted to be able to feel and sense, even though the outcome could be so painful.

Myka believed that physical intimacy was part of the yin to the yang of the trials and tribulations of a relationship. And when her marriage gave her nothing but trials and tribulations for more than half its duration, so she felt, she needed find the missing piece elsewhere. This was not a new practice. After all, other pieces have vanished from her marriage over the past five years, and Myka found replacements for those elsewhere – places and people where she can discuss art and philosophy and science and politics and emotions. Be it through friends or a book clubs, therapy or online forums.

But physical intimacy was the one thing she held out on, because Giselle didn’t approve. Giselle didn’t approve of Myka outsourcing the others initially, either. She was jealous and angry and resentful that Myka spent so much time elsewhere, with other people, long before their son was born. It was after their son came that Giselle realised that it was actually better for the both of them that Myka had those outlet. So she let go.

Except for the sex part. They talked about it a number of time. Myke was even brave enough to talk about it in couples’ counselling, but Giselle couldn’t let go of that. And for a long time Myka did nothing in the hope that things would get better, that therapy would work – for them as a couple and for them as individuals.

But it didn’t. Couples counselling was a pointless exercise in lip service because Giselle didn’t want to be there at all. Myka didn’t know how her partner’s therapy was going, but from her perspective, Giselle didn’t change. The only person who was changing was Myka. And the more Myka needed Giselle to change with her, the less Giselle changed, and the sadder and darker they both grew with the reality that they each needed the other to do things she was unable to do.

After five years of freezing loneliness, after being close to breaking point one too many times, Myka just couldn’t wait any longer. She’d waited long enough for Giselle to come around, she’d invested every emotional and mental resource in supporting her partner, in holding out, and it brought her to near ruin. She needed to _feel_ again, and if Giselle wouldn’t be the person, with whom she’d feel, it would have to be done with someone else. And if Giselle didn’t see the damage that her insistence was causing Myka, then Myka would seek to repair that damage without Giselle’s approval.

Myka’s repairs had been in progress for five weeks now. She had seen Irene four times since she had started seeing Helena and she hadn’t yet mentioned Helena to Irene. And she really didn’t know why.

Myka drew a weak breath and pushed her glasses up past her forehead. “I’m having an affair,” she said plainly, and that was the first time she’d said those words out lout.

Irene subtly raised a questioning eye brow and Myka huffed a choked laugh and looked down, waiting.

There were no follow-up questions. Irene was waiting for Myka to say what she thought was important.

“I’ve been seeing this woman, Helena,” she spoke slowly and looked up, at Irene, sitting across the small room from her, cross legged, clasping her hands. “We meet once a week, for an evening in a hotel room and have sex.”

Irene nodded.

And in saying those words to someone else other than herself, saying them plainly, matter of fact, without the overwhelming din of guilt and judgement of her own morality, she found freedom.

“I knew I missed sex,” Myka exhaled and leaned forward, “but I really didn’t know _just_ _how_ _much_ ,” she confessed with a sad smile.

Still, Irene said nothing.

“And it’s weird, you know? The fact that we get into that room, and there is none of the relationship bullshit. There’s no talking about it first, there no checking in, there are no eggshells anywhere,” she leaned back as she found her footing in her confession. “We lock that door behind us and get straight to it.”

“And how does that feel?” Irene asks.

“It feels… kind of odd… I’m not used to being so straight forward about sex. And I’m not used to sex being just… sex. Without love, without romance.”

“But that’s something you have been talking about for quite some time, how sex is another slice of life? How satisfying the need doesn’t have to be part of the complex construct of a relationship?”

Myka loved and hated it when Irene quoted herself back to her. “I did, and I still believe that,” Myka answered with conviction. “I’m just feeling it now, experiencing it now, and I keep wondering… whether it is _just_ sex,” Myka looked at Irene again.

“So how does it feel?” Irene asked again, knowing Myka would attribute a different meaning to the question. “What emotions?” she asked explicitly.

Myka took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly, leaning back again. She never liked it when Irene asked her to name emotions. Because to Myka a single word could hardly describe them. Sensations and emotions, in Myka’s world, were categorised by what they felt _like_. For example, Myka felt happiness in different ways, and each felt very differently to the other. She felt happiness when she was reading stories to her son, which was a completely different kind of happiness to that she felt when she managed to catch the sunrise on her run around Mystic Lake just at the right time. So simply saying “happiness” wouldn’t do. Myka always needed to define _what kind_ of happiness, or any other emotion, she was feeling.

Irene always challenged that habit of Myka’s.

Myka looked around the room, thinking about what emotions her time with Helena brought up in her, what emotions sex with Helena brought out in her. “It’s… It’s the kind of freedom you feel when you first get your driving license,” she said with a glint in her eye, “like anything is possible. Like you can go anywhere and you can do anything.”

“A life changing experience,” Irene narrated.

Myka darted a look towards the tweed-clad woman across the room.

“I find it interesting you mention freedom, Myka, because throughout our time together, whenever we discuss Giselle, you are reluctant to agree when I ask you if you felt trapped.”

There it was. That was the moment that Myka knew would inevitably come, because Irene Frederic had a knack of hitting those nails that stuck out of Myka’s frame with the precision of a master carpenter. Myka bit on her bottom lip hard, uselessly trying to stop it from quivering and consequently, failing to stop herself from welling up. She reached for the tissue box under Irene’s watchful eyes.

“What touched you there?” she asked Myka eventually, after Myka blew her nose twice.

Myka exhaled loudly, trying to catch her breath and her thoughts and her feelings. “If I were trapped, that would mean I was helpless. And I’m not helpless,” she stated definitively. “I made choices that got me to where I am, and I need to deal with the consequences,” Myka broke down, sobbing.

“Surely you don’t believe that every circumstance that got Giselle to where she is and you to where you are were all down to _your_ choices,” Irene spoke calmly.

Myka laughed through her tears. There, Irene Frederic did it again, driving another nail in with a crafted statement that matched Myka’s logic to a tee.

“Did we not discuss Inappropriately Flavoured Guilt?” Irene mused and Myka smiled. They had discussed The Two Flavours of Guilt, as Irene called them, on more than one occasion, and thinking that guilt was ice cream that came in two flavours – Appropriate and Inappropriate – always made Myka smile.

“Okay, then,” Myka relented. “But I chose to stay with her. I chose to stay with her and have a baby instead of leaving.”

“And what was the reason for that?” Irene tilted her head slightly.

Myka knew what Irene was doing. She was reminding Myka to step out of the place where she blamed herself for everything and think about her reality more clearly. She was reminding Myka that she really had to stop chipping at the tub of Inappropriate Guilt. She was reminding Myka that Myka was the one who insisted for long months that Giselle sought therapy for the difficulties she was experiencing with her parents and her career and her emotions; that Myka was the one who insisted and initiated and drove not one, but _three_ rounds of couples counselling; that Myka was the one who supported Giselle throughout the years she struggled with her work, with her self-worth, with her self-esteem. “Because I wanted to do the right thing by her,” she answered meekly, “the right thing by us.”

Irene hummed. Myka sank in her seat and into her thoughts.

“We talk about my guilt a lot,” Myka looked at Irene, who nodded, “and for all my belief in talk therapy, I’m really struggling to work through this,” she added bitterly and brought a clean tissue to wipe her tears.

Since Irene introduced her to The Two Flavours of Guilt, Myka realised she was consuming Inappropriate-flavoured Guilt by the gallon. She also found it was a poison and a motivation at the same time, like a recreational drug. It made her move when she was bone tired, it made her run faster and work harder. It had made her do what she believed was right by her partner for a very long time, irrespective of whether it was right by herself.

“I’d like to overturn an assumption,” Irene looked down for a moment. She rarely made assumptions. “But how does your affair fit in with your guilt?”

Myka didn’t need time to think about this one because she’d been so aware of her guilt since the first time she met Helena. She couldn’t _not_ be. it was narrating and criticising her every move. “The first time…” Myka thought about the café and how the whole thing nearly ended before it even began. How her guilt tried to talk her out of it but something within her, something she didn’t recognise, made her stay.

It was that same force, she reckoned, that made her let go of the desktop the first evening in a hotel room, that pushed her body forward while guilt was trying to hold her mind back. But it was also her guilt that then took hold of her body and wouldn’t let her come that evening. “The first time we were together I was so nervous and so torn and so guilty, I couldn’t…” she stopped herself, feeling a bit awkward and ashamed of what had happened then.

Irene, however, was not going to make any more assumptions. “Couldn’t what?”

“I couldn’t climax,” Myka paused, these words suddenly harder to speak, “you know, when she touched me.”

Irene nodded.

“So the second time,” Myka recalled the hour before her second meeting with Helena, at Winthrop, by the airport, “I focused on what I wanted to happen that evening. I focused on how I would feel at the end of it.”

“Which was what?”

“Satisfied,” Myka smiled brightly, “fulfilled,” she used single words to describe how sex with Helena felt, but there was no other sensation with which to compare them. Sex with Helena made Myka feel satisfied and fulfilled in ways she’d never felt before. Then the smile fell from her lips. “Desired.”

Myka could not recall a time she felt she had ever felt as desired as Helena desired her, ever, in her whole life. She hoped Irene didn’t ask something difficult because Myka felt she was choking.

“And did it work?” Irene continued to prod.

Myka nodded as she regained breath and a sad smile returned to her lips. She recalled how she felt before and after each time she had met with Helena and compared them to one another, week on week. Now, that she was thinking about it in the presence of Irene, it would seem that focusing on the outcome did the trick: Helena was the only thing in her life from which she had managed to weed out inappropriate guilt. Which, again, was ironic, because should Giselle were to find out about Helena she would be hurt, and Myka’s guilt about that hurt would be wholly _appropriate_.

“Where did that take you?” Irene asked, another trademark question.

“I’ve been with her five times,” Myka stretched her hand on her knee, counting five fingers, “and each time there was less guilt, because of how I feel when I’m with her. Because how I feel after.”

Irene nodded.

“I know that oxytocin and adrenalin and endorphins are released when you have sex, and they all mess with your brain and your feelings, but…” Myka paused and looked at Irene.

“What is it?”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she half smiled, “but the times I’m with Helena are like the times I’m here.”

Irene’s eyebrows shot up. It’s the first time Myka had seen this type of surprise painted on the stern, unreadable woman.

“When I’m with her, there is no judgement. There are no demands and no expectations. I come as I am – no pun intended – and everything is allowed.”

“You are free.”

Myka breathed deeply. “For two evenings a week – I’m free.”


	6. V. (45 weeks previous)

“Will you let me try something different today?” Helena asked between impatient kisses and hurried caresses she was trading with Myka.

Myka was held up by a conference call that overran and arrived thirty minutes late to their rendezvous. It had been two months since they started seeing each other and this was the first time Myka had been late. She was terribly apologetic and keen to make up for lost time.

Myka nodded with a small hum, her mouth latched to the top of Helena’s breast and her hand pulling Helena’s leg up, to place it around her waist.

“I need you to stop, then,” Helena spoke and stopped herself from responding to Myka’s body, to her movements. Myka, quick study that she was, had already learned how to render Helena useless with sensual touch.

Myka slowed her mouth and gave Helena’s breast a light peck. “Stop? What? How?” she asked with a confused smile, unsure what Helena had meant with her instruction. Stop kissing Helena’s breast? Stop pulling Helena towards her? Stop touching her altogether?

Helena brushed her thumb against Myka’s baffled brow. “I would like to keep today focused on you,” she said with a small smile.

“So I won’t touch you?” Myka confirmed.

Helena nodded.

“But I love touching you,” Myka grinned lopsidedly.

“I know.”

“I can come just by touching you, you know,” she argued her case further.

“I know,” Helena touched her thumb to Myka’s lips, “that’s precisely why I would like you to not touch me today.”

“So… I don’t come?” Myka questioned Helena’s logic.

“Oh,” Helena breathed through a smirk, “I fully intend on making you come, darling,” she pushed herself up from the bed, by way of which she pushed Myka from her.

Myka drew her eyebrows closer together in befuddlement and suspicion, not entirely sure of what Helena’s intent behind her request was. Was this a game? Was this punishment? Was this a reward? For now, all she could tell was that she was being pushed to her back by a terribly sexy woman – something with which she was quite happy to continue. “Am I allowed to change my mind?” Myka asked as she landed on her back, and Helena straddled her knees, peeling her underwear from her, shuffling down her legs as she went.

“Hmmm,” Helena contemplated as she slipped back up Myka’s naked body, “I would rather you tried not to,” she began kissing Myka’s shoulder, making her way to the base of her long, regal neck – a particularly sensitive area in Myka’s body.

“This isn’t fair,” Myka grumbled, Helena was using the quickest ways to turn her on.

Helena chuckled as she took in a patch of skin just under Myka’s ear into her mouth. “Tell you what,” she spoke brightly after releasing Myka’s neck with a sharp bite. “Should it get too much, simply say ‘apples’”.

“A safe word?” Myka asked, somewhere between being amused and alarmed, and tried to push herself up to her elbows.

Helena didn’t let her. She didn’t need to exert much strength, all she needed to do was flick her hair confidently, pout just so and let her smouldering, dark gaze burn into Myka’s inquisitive eyes. “Of sorts, but please trust me. Today is not about pain. Today is all about pleasure.”

Myka’s narrowed her eyes at Helena, a cocky, dominant and lordly Helena, the very one who pissed her off the first night they were together. Only now, two months and nine evenings on, Helena’s smug arrogance aroused Myka rather than annoyed her. “’Apples’?” she confirmed.

“’Apples’,” Helena smiled down at her and took her lips with her own.

They kissed slowly, delicately, so much so that the lightness and dedication of the act made Myka stop making a conscious effort to understand what Helena was doing so that she could match her. After a few minutes of being kissed deftly, Myka relaxed into the notion that this wouldn’t be the physical tête-à-tête she usually had with Helena. Instead, she convinced herself that if the focus of that evening was her, she should be able to make demands.

But when she tried to deepen the kiss, she was surprised to have found herself unable. She was being kissed into submission by Helena, who had taken control of their kisses and of Myka, without using any physical force whatsoever. Helena created a flow to her kisses that Myka simply couldn’t break. Helena was the one starting each kiss; she was the one punctuating phrases with a nip of a lip or a swipe of a tongue; she was the one drawing each kiss to a close.

And Myka, hypnotised and hooked on Helena kissing her like she was telling a story, gave up trying to answer Helena’s assertions and let go of everything but the feeling of Helena against her.

What Helena was doing was excruciatingly enticing. She was taking her time with each kiss, as if it were a written paragraph, creating a rhythm and a structure, using emphasis with touch and breath and bite. Myka could tell when each paragraph started and ended, and every time a kiss concluded her chest constricted a little.

_Is this too much already?_ Myka thought and her body tensed in response.

Helena hushed her calmly without stopping the story she was telling with her kisses. “Trust me.”

Without having moved at all, it appeared Helena slinked from being on top of Myka, to lying beside her, covering half of Myka’s body with her own, with her leg draped lazily between her lover’s. Myka breathed an urgent hum as Helena started another sentence, her chest constricting again, tightening slightly with the softness of Helena’s touches. And then Helena pushed her leg against Myka’s centre, and Myka was shaken from her blissful, entranced state with a gasp.

It wasn’t Myka’s start that brought Helena to, but the feel of her sex. Helena looked down into green eyes and answered Myka’s gasp with deep breath and a slack jaw. _Goodness_ , she thought, Myka was wet. Helena knew that she would be, after all, what she had been doing was meant to turn Myka on. But not like _that_. Not that much. Not that hot. “Myka, darling,” she whispered to the woman beneath her.

Myka’s whimper was swallowed by another attentive kiss. It wasn't only her chest that was constricting. Now her core was tightening too, in slow, gentle tugs, responding to Helena above her.

“You are…” Helena spoke again, but her breath had run out as she straightened her leg, half mounting Myka’s thigh. Myka’s hips rose to meet hers, and suddenly Helena’s body was responding of its own volition to Myka’s pressing against it.  

Myka’s body was reacting in kind, and without thinking Myka reached her hand to the nape of Helena’s neck to hold Helena to her with slightest pressure of the pads of her fingers just above the line where Helena’s hair met the back of her neck. But then Helena resumed kissing her and Myka’s arms fell limp at her sides.

Helena looked closer at Myka, felt her breathing, felt her straining and slacking, but not demanding more. Myka was not asking Helena to stop, but not asking her to move faster, either. It felt to Helena that Myka was giving herself to her, that Myka had let go of everything else in her world and let Helena overwhelm her with touch, with sensation, with sex. And, granted, that was Helena’s plan when she asked Myka’s permission to do _something_ _different_ , but she hadn't expected complete submission so quickly.

Before their meeting that night, Helena had considered how Myka had been during their past sessions. How excited Myka was by a passionate exchange, how she was not afraid to take Helena; but how quickly she retreated into her own passion if she knew her own climax wasn't imminent. And once withdrawn, how quick she was to stop any additional efforts. And in Helena’s view, that was a great shame.

Helena’s intent behind focusing on Myka was to test Myka’s limits, to try and push her just outside them and free the pent-up passion with which she scorched herself after years of sex with a non-compatible partner. Helena’s intent was to begin and explore Myka’s willingness to be touched without the prospect of a climax, which Helena already knew, came easier for Myka when she touched Helena at the same time.

She was planning to invest in touching Myka, in the hope that Myka let go of her need to trade when having sex, that Myka be selfish and demanding with her own passion. From Helena’s perspective, as fun and fantastic her sessions with Myka had been so far, their charm and fierce energy would have worn off eventually, unless Myka became a sexual and sensual peer to Helena.

This was a lesson she had learned with past lovers, especially female lovers. In Helena’s experience, men tended to be practical with their approach to the affair, whereas women tended to be intense. Half the women she had taken up as lovers fell desperately in love with her and left their partners to pursue a romantic relationship with Helena – which was not quite what Helena had in mind when starting the affair (as opposed to one man, an eighth of all her male lovers, who followed that path).

That intensity which so quickly turned to desperation, was akin to the one Myka wore the first few times they had met. It was also that intensity that brought crazy, hot, lustful, eager, sweaty, explosive sex; and as great as _that_ was, Helena had always got bored with it after a while.

Helena had always put her own boredom and her lovers’ desperation down to the dynamic that set in the relationship with those lovers: Helena’s confidence and unapologetic need (and consequential taking) surpassed that of lovers who became desperate. Lovers who didn’t become desperate were as confident and as unapologetic as she was.

Over time, Helena had perfected her methods and plans, which helped determine how likely a lover was to become desperate. Helena’s methods were means of exploring how open minded her lovers were, how open their bodies were, what their tolerance was like. How confident they were with their needs, how comfortably demanding they were. How capable they were of switching between being dominant and submissive.

Having caught glimpses of Myka’s spirit and playfulness, Helena suspected Myka’s confidence and need matched her own. It was only a matter of making Myka less contrite, which would not be an easy dfeat

Which is why Helena didn't think Myka would be so receptive so quickly. She assumed Myka would need time to acclimatise, to adapt. When Myka felt so needy and welcoming beneath her, she couldn’t help but speak her worship to her lover. “You are magnificent,” she whispered into Myka’s lips, finishing her thought from earlier, and Myka exhaled a muffled response with exertion. _Perhaps_ , Helena thought, _it would be best to give Myka time to use the safe word, just in case_.

So Helena’s sentences grew a fraction shorter and the gaps between them grew a fraction longer.

Myka was emitting small sounds into the kisses and smaller breaths into the breaks, that sounded to Helena a lot like her name and nothing like ‘apples’.

Every time her name fell from Myka’s lips, even if it was broken or only half uttered (and most of times it was either one or the other), Helena smiled, because Myka had been nothing but full of surprises so far. As she drew a chapter of kisses to a close she looked at Myka again and she looked nothing like she had during their first, or even second meeting. Myka looked like she was enjoying this - this touch, this moment - more than anything, even though there was no orgasm in sight.

As ‘apples’ were nowhere to be heard, Helena decided to up the ante. With the following chapter she began with her lips, she also pulled her hand down from Myka’s cheek to her shoulder, down her arm; feeling the curve of her biceps, to span her forearm and how it flexed and tightened as Myka gripped at the sheet at her side. Helena slipped the tips of her fingers down still, to meet the back of Myka’s hand, defined tendons and slender fingers that turned upwards to greet her with the soft skin of her palm.

Helena traced abstract shapes on Myka’s open palm with each of her digits, tokens of appreciation, runes of admiration, before drawing her fingers to Myka’s hip, to traverse up its outer curve and down its inner, and grant Myka a promising twist in the plot.

Myka winced in ecstasy, in the short pause between paragraphs. Helena rose above her, to look, to learn the meaning of the expression. As she continued moving against Myka, slowly, lightly, Myka’s body broke with a small, choked climax.

Helena smiled and leaned in again to continue the chapter with her lips on Myka’s, a chapter her fingers hadn't stopped writing at the apex of her thighs.

Myka’s body recoiled, all tension falling from it, as if she had woken from deep sleep. Helena was still kissing her, with that soothing, narcotic pace, but her hand… Myka felt it on her sex, but it wasn’t moving. And her leg… Myka felt it was close enough to her centre, but not quite touching. She was pinned by Helena even though there was very little contact between their bodies. Myka felt she couldn’t possibly move because she might disturb the delicate balance in which she and Helena were entwined.

Helena, who felt Myka was now alert, brought another sentence to a close and pulled back. Desire, had it ever had a face, Myka’s painted it perfectly. They looked at each other for a minute, Helena poised above Myka, asking her with her eyes whether ‘apples’ is the next word she wanted to say.

But instead Myka mouthed, “touch me”.

Helena’s eyes burned with desire that mirrored Myka’s as she pushed her hand down a short inch and brushed Myka’s mound, with the same slow, intoxicating rhythm she set for her kisses. Her touch was flat, superficial, intended to keep Myka where she was. Not build her up, not urge her towards an edge down which she’d tumble uncontrollably.

It was touching for touching’s sake, all the while eyes were locked with mirrored need, until Myka let her head fall back to expose soft, white skin under her chin; to create those stretched tendons that formed ridges along Myka’s neck, cliffs begging lips to climb them, asking tongue to taste them – and Helena, who had given all of herself to Myka, had no resolve left in her to resist.

In her own world, Myka felt free and content and wanted and everything she had hoped an affair would make her feel. Helena, this mysterious woman of whom she knew nothing, really, who started out, in Myka’s opinion, as an arrogant, bored elitist, was doing all the right things. She was kissing Myka because _she_ _wanted_ to kiss her, touching Myka because _she_ _wanted_ to touch her. She was doing all these things to Myka because Helena, that self-satisfied, vain snob, _wanted_ Myka, and that understanding felt so amazing to Myka who hadn’t been wanted in years…

And after a while of the soft caresses that were just hard enough to be exciting, it felt to Myka that Helena, for all her want, didn't want to make Myka come, despite her earlier promise. The realisation that followed, however, was new in its raw concept to Myka. She realised that just feeling Helena, feeling Helena wanting and touching her (but not quite), was just fine by her. It was more than just fine by her, in fact. It was divine.

For the past few years, whenever Irene would ask Myka why she felt she needed an affair if sex was what she was missing, why toys and masturbation weren’t enough, Myka tried to explain what she was having now: having someone _else_ , other than herself, touch her, excite her, want her, do things to her – things she didn't know were coming, things she didn’t know she wanted. Even though it didn’t feel like Helena was taking her anywhere in particular, Myka wouldn’t put it past her lover to make a swift 180 at any given time, and start fucking her hard all of a sudden. But she didn’t know what Helena would choose to do next, and for Myka, who had been solely responsible for her own sexual gratification for the past five years, not knowing _how_ she would be touched was hugely exciting.

Then, there was the interaction with another person, the exchange. Not in the bump-and-grind sense, but in the fact there was _another_ human being who wanted. Myka wanted Helena to want to touch her, but she wanted Helena to want Myka to touch her as well. Myka loved touching as much as she loved being touched (if not more), and she missed the kind of excitement she felt from touching someone else, as opposed to the excitement she felt when she was being touched. Myka’s want to be wanted went both ways: for Myka’s lover to want her, to want to kiss her, touch her, fuck her; but for Myka’s lover to want Myka to kiss her, to want Myka to touch her, to want Myka to fuck her.

Even though Helena wanted Myka to do none of those things _right that moment_ , the fact there even was _a_ _Helena_ made Myka feel less lonely in her passion. Myka had noticed that her life was getting to a point where she wasn’t feeling lonely at all anymore.

Myka started smiling at that thought, that she wasn’t lonely anymore, that she was happy, that she was wanted both ways, that she was being taken care of - all because of Helena.

Without thinking, Myka reached both her hands to Helena’s shoulders and gave them a rich rub, feeling the thin film of sweat covering the woman above her, feeling her muscles hard at work.

Helena growled at the touch and trailed her kisses back to Myka’s lips, and as she did, Myka laced her fingers through the hair at the nape of Helena’s neck, giving the stunning woman above her what she had hoped would be an encouraging caress.

Myka took the forbidding of touching to touching of the sexual kind, and the squeeze she just granted Helena wasn't sexual touching in her book. It was a touch acknowledging Helena’s effort, appreciating the expert in her craft, the genius in her art. The more she met with Helena, she realised just how dull her sex life had always been (and she blamed fucking teenage novels and RomComs and their depiction of sex) and just how fascinating sex could be, given the right people participated. So to show her recognition for it all, Myka touched Helena: caring stroke to her lover’s shoulders, then tips of fingers at the back of Helena’s head. Gratitude and recognition. That was all.

To Helena, however, this touch was nothing _but_ sexual. When she told Myka earlier to stop touching her, it was because she knew what Myka, _damn that woman to hell for being so good at this_ , could do with her fingers.

Helena had never been overly sensitive before, and so far, she blamed this new brand of being so-easily-turned-on for not having been as sexually active over the past 18 months. But even with this excuse, Myka’s effect on her was bordering on the ridiculous.

When Myka’s fingers reached the nape of her neck to cradle the base of her skull just in time with Helena closing a long paragraph of kisses, Helena felt a distinct throb between her legs, one she had hoped to avoid until she was done with Myka. _It was possible_ , an errant thought passed through her mind, _that I share a kind of energy transfer with Myka, the kind described in Buddhism books. And Tantra books_.

_Oh, God_ , Helena fought her mind to stop unravelling with thoughts of practicing Tantra with Myka and fought her body to stop responding to her mind; for now, anyway. The prospect of by-the-book tantric sex could be explored later, but for now, she was on a mission.

_All because of her sodding fingers in my sodding hair_ , she thought, and groaned, and stopped a kiss mid-sentence, and looked down at Myka. “Stop.”

Myka was confused again. Her face was that of a child who was being told off for having done nothing wrong.

“Your hands. Out of my hair, please,” Helena instructed.

Myka raised her eyebrows in surprise. She honestly didn't think that qualified as the touching that was not allowed. She looked at Helena and noticed how dark her eyes had become, the flush on her cheeks, the curve of her lips. They all told the same story. And Myka just could not stop her own arrogant smirk from spreading across her lips, because she knew that story by now. Helena wasn’t angry. Helena was _wanting_.

Helena could feel petulant anger rising within her. She had a plan, she had Myka at her fingertips (figuratively and literally), with the prospect of undoing her completely. But Myka undid the plan. Myka was fast undoing _her_. To Helena, there and then, that was just shy of utterly unacceptable.

But Myka was still very much at her fingertips, and albeit a few minutes ahead of schedule, Helena reached for Myka’s clit and started giving it that same maddening, addictive barely-there touch.

Myka arched with a loud moan that hid within it a laugh. An arrogant laugh.

Helena made a calculating choice to ignore the fact Myka saw her faltering, saw her truly vulnerable, because she didn't know what she wanted Myka to mean to her yet. So few people had seen Helena truly vulnerable and they were people Helena had loved, who loved Helena back; and only one of them was a lover. Sharing this type of vulnerability with a lover was not something Helena had made a habit of, because the only lover she shared this vulnerability with, she wound up marrying.

So for now, before any of these thoughts became unnecessarily deep and heavy, Helena focused on taking the woman beneath her, a woman waiting for her touch, waiting for Helena to weave wonder through her body (and Helena Wells knew exactly just how capable she was of weaving nothing short of wonder with her fingers where they were).

Soon enough, Myka’s arrogance was all but gone, replaced by wanton gasps and needy mewls, which confirmed to Helena that her plan had hardly been ruined. In fact, it appeared to have been executed rather successfully. And Myka was exceeding expectations, as well.

Moving against Helena’s hand, giving in to Helena’s touch, Myka seemed to be free of her world, free her of her guilt. She was entirely engrossed in what Helena was doing to her, and nothing else mattered.

From tiny, gentle strokes of her clit, Helena moved lower, between slick folds. She used the same small movements to start with, and after two or three paragraphs she lengthened her touches.

Myka’s excitement flowed - sometimes at the beginning of a paragraph, sometimes halfway through, but she had cottoned on to the fact that Helena was not going to push her too far too quickly, so she used the time to savour the touch, savour how _everything_ felt: Helena’s forearm across her belly, Helena’s belly against her waist, Helena’s sternum against her breast, Helena’s lips on hers, Helena’s breaths across her cheek. The scent of Helena’s soap mixed with perfume and sweat and arousal. The taste of her lips and how it was different to the taste of her tongue. How, even with her eyes closed, she could see the pale luminescence of Helena’s skin and the red hue that dusted it, the rich brown of her eyes, the thick black of her hair. It was all so… sensual.

Every one of Myka’s senses was newly found, bar her sense of time. Myka, who rarely needed a watch to tell time, couldn’t tell if Helena had been touching her for an hour or two or five and she couldn’t be bothered less about it, it didn’t matter. It was new and _different_ and exhilarating.

Helena did, eventually, reach the part of the plan that worked Myka up. She stitched together the different phrases she practiced with her fingers into a series of patterns (because having Myka expect what came next was no fun at all, and Helena had noticed how good Myka was with identifying patterns) which she had then randomly applied in varying speeds and pressures.

It was only then that Helena lifted the touch embargo, and matter-of-factly took Myka’s hands to where she needed them and she rolled them both to that climax she’d promised Myka.

* * *

After Myka left, Helena luxuriated in the vast bed of the hotel room and thought about how pleased she was that Myka didn’t use the safe word, how excited she was that Myka left with a smile and a promise for meeting again the following week.

She thought about how Myka had changed over the short time they had known each other and how different that was to most people she had known, let alone lovers.

On her way to her car and on her drive home, Myka, on her part, had a bank of sensations to catalogue and commit to memory. She also admitted to herself that Helena had given her an education that evening: she taught her a whole new way to experience and enjoy sex.

She also taught her to never question Helena’s intent.


	7. VI. (42 weeks previous)

Helena opened the hotel room door, walked in and closed it behind her.

The room appeared empty. The lights were off, the furnishings untouched. That struck Helena as odd, because she had expected Myka to already be there. She may have been mistaken, then, perhaps Myka was held up in traffic, perhaps something else. She’d get settled, then, and text Myka if she hadn’t arrived by then.

She took a few steps in, placed her bag on the floor and reached for the lights, only to feel one hand spanning her hip, sliding up her body to her breast, and another diving into the black waterfall of her hair from behind her ear, pushing it away from her neck, while gently coaxing her to expose her neck.

She swallowed a quick breath and tightened her fists, her body on full alert for all the right and wrong reasons.

“Lights off,” Myka’s voice was low and soft but assertive in her ear and she melted into Myka’s hands, “I want to just feel you tonight,” Myka nuzzled her hair, reached for her ear, and bit on its shell once her mouth found it. “I know how beautiful you look, Helena, so I _just_ want to feel you tonight.”

And with those words Myka’s nimble fingers began undoing buttons and clasps and knots that adorned the clothes on Helena’s body, and then they began to undo knots and twists in her body, and then they made new knots and twists in Helena’s body which they later undid.

As Myka cared for Helena’s every physical need, Helena was reminding herself how wonderful it was to be cared for like that by a lover – she had missed it so much. And still, Myka not only surprised her with such bold initiative, she also surprised Helena with the way she had touched her, how she alternated methods, switched and swapped between the tried and tested and the uncharted, to bring Helena to the brink and over it, time and time again.

Myka stayed on course with her plan. She _felt_ Helena, thoroughly, fastidiously, as if she was searching for the smallest, most precious needle in the largest of haystacks, leaving no sheaf untouched. She kept the room dark so she wasn’t distracted by how warm Helena’s brown eyes were, or how her lips parted, wet and dark with want. She didn’t need to be mesmerised by how Helena’s sweat glistened in different lights, or how tight her nipples grew with her arousal, or how her dark hair juxtaposed her skin and the bedding as she threw her head back in euphoria. She already had those memorised.

Instead, she focused on how hard Helena’s trapezius muscles felt when she bent Helena’s head to one side and suckled on the skin she exposed. She honed in on the taste of sweat in the crook of Helena’s elbow versus the taste of the sweat between her breasts. She narrowed her sensory input on the different response Helena’s thighs produced when Myka touched Helena with her hand, or her mouth or her own thigh.

There was the tightening of biceps, the twitching of abdominal muscles. There were glutes and quads and calf muscles forming reactions across Helena’s body. There were curling toes and grasping fingers and scraping nails. There were sounds made through an open mouth, sounds made through tightly shut lips and sounds that escaped through teeth gritting or biting. There was smooth skin and gooseflesh and stretched tendons and pebbled nipples.

There was just so much to feel, so much to focus on.

Even though Myka dominated the exchange, it was still an exchange, and they were both finding release. Helena wasn’t explicitly banned from touching Myka, but Myka wasn’t giving Helena much chance to repay most of the favours she was bestowing upon her.

Somewhere, in the heated haze that was half afterglow and half foreplay, Helena found it in her to ask, “Are you executing some form of revenge?”

Myka kissed Helena’s centre, a long, lustful kiss before she acknowledged her question. “What for?” she hadn’t stopped her fingers moving through Helena’s folds, though.

Helena squirmed above her, teetering between agony and ecstasy, Myka was exciting her in ways that were far beyond what she was used to, far beyond what most her lovers or her husband ever bothered to explore with her. “Three...” she gasped and tightened her grip of Myka’s curls, “three weeks ago.”

“What happened three---“ Myka started and then, “oh…” she remembered all too well, because at the end of _that_ meeting, after Helena touched and touched and touched her, Myka took her time attributing sensations to images to sounds to smells, so that her eidetic memory could serve her well when she was alone.

Thinking those memories up only stirred Myka to touch her lover more, touch her harder. “No,” Myka answered flatly and leaned in to grant Helena another, most intimate of kisses. “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” she looked up Helena’s body with a crooked smile to see what response she would get. “Are you cold, Helena?” she asked and pushed three fingers inside her, “Is this cold?” she dipped her head again and took Helena’s clit in her mouth.

Helena let out a scream, then let go of Myka’s hair in favour of biting on her own fist as the seemingly insatiable woman between her legs pushed her over the edge for what could have been the hundredth time that evening.

It was then that Helena knew just _how_ different Myka was to all her previous lovers.


	8. VII. (39 weeks previous)

Paved paths, neatly trimmed grass, co-eds walking around with either no care or every care in the world, even though those cares would turn out to mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, or in a matter of a year or two.

Helena noted these as she walked the Harvard pathways towards Boylston Hall, and everything about Cambridge of the New World, reminded her of Cambridge of the Old. That made her smile – how people, even at their most revolutionary, could never stray too far from what they knew, because imagining something truly alien is almost unheard of in human history.

She pulled Boylston Hall’s heavy, wooden door and walked into the old building, hasting her step to the third floor, to the office of one, Professor Arthur Nielsen. Arthur, or Artie to all of his acquaintances bar Helena, was primarily a Post-Grad Supervisor in the Department of Linguistics, and Helena had come across his work when she was writing her Master’s thesis, back in the Old Cambridge.

When she moved to the US with Wolly, she tracked him down, and often engaged with him to write pieces for one of her literary or tech magazines, or offer peer commentary on pretty much any topic he’d choose.

He was a gruff and sometimes unpleasant old man, but Helena respected him for his intellect, for his body of work, for his achievements and for how fearless he had been with his opinions throughout his entire career. And then, of course, how accurate he had been about pretty much any analysis he had provided, whether it was personal or professional.

Over the years they had become fast friends, and made quite the odd couple: him, with his ruffled wardrobe, frazzled hair, thick, bushy eyebrows and a look in his eyes that always seemed to herald a forthcoming breakthrough or breakdown; and Helena, with her smoothed-to-perfection appearance, aloof-slash-detached politeness and even language. The Unflappable Ice Queen and the Mad Professor.

What they did share was their cerebral snobbery and general contempt for less capable human beings. Neither suffered fools or political correctness, both preferred spades to be spades, and took blunt honesty to evasive courtesy any day of the week. That’s why they had become each other’s confidantes. When Artie’s wife left him for his colleague, Helena was there to provide comfort and solace and a judgment-free shoulder to which Artie could say anything, no matter how cruel or unbecoming it may have sounded to anyone other than Helena.

And when Helena embarked on her first affair, before her agreement with Wolly, she confided in Artie. It was he who suggested Helena approached the problem with her husband altogether differently. It was his idea to renegotiate the terms of their marriage and find an agreement they could both live with.

Artie and Helena didn’t meet regularly, but when they did, it was like no time had gone by. The conversations would start as if they never left it off and would heat and cool like at the pace of a thermodynamic rollercoaster, and more often than not, would instigate an epiphany or some form of change in either or both.

“HG!” Artie greeted her after she knocked on the door to his office. He was probably the last person alive to call her HG, a version of her name she only used when she published her own written work. Helena knew he only did that to pay her back for calling him –

“Arthur.” She smiled broadly at the stout man.

They hugged briefly but cordially.

“Come, come,” he ushered her through his messy office, a mess Helena didn’t believe ever changed. It was perpetual mess, like a disorganised warehouse. Vertical stacks of books everywhere, pools of papers, magazines and letters at their feet – they stupefied and shocked her anew every time she visited him. She knew that Artie knew the terrain of his office. He knew where every book was, where every essay lay. She also knew that it was part of his way of keeping the University out of his business, so she never challenged it. It was all part of who Artie was.

He led her to the small nook behind a stack of books, boxes and papers that formed a partition wall between his working space and his thinking space.

There were two armchairs flanking a space heater, the exposed coil kind, that kind that was banned from use in public buildings sometime in the early 90s due to its propensity to start fires.

“Sit,” he mumbled and popped into one of the armchairs.

Helena pointed at the old appliance. “They don’t know you have it, do they?” she asked with a cocky smile.

“HA!” He exhaled loudly, “If by ‘they’ you mean the Health and Safety Gestapo, then no, they don’t,” he leaned over the armrest to pick up a small thermos. “But if by ‘they’ you mean the Engineering Underground, they most certainly know I do,” he poured a generous portion of a hot liquid that looked like tea into a mug at his side, and then poured some of it into the thermos’ lid and offered it to Helena who accepted appreciatively.

“The Secret Society of Electrics still lives?” she took the cup towards her lips by instinct, and inhaled. The ingredients were unmistakable in their potency: ginger tea of the Irish variety. Helena took a small sip, experiencing the dual sting – that of ginger and that of whiskey.

“One of the things I will always love about this place,” Artie took a small sip and sighed, “it respects tradition like no other.”

Helena smiled fondly at the nostalgia of university traditions. “How have you been keeping, dear heart?”

“Same as always,” he said with a sad sigh, “postgrads come and postgrads go. I supervised a handful of PhDs, too, but it’s just not as exciting as it used to be,” he straightened his look at her. “Are you staying true to your promise? Are you considering a PhD here, with me, at least once a year?”

Helena laughed heartily. “I do. At least once a year, and usually around the holidays.”

“One day,” he smiled at her from above the rim of his glasses and wagged his finger at her, as a warning, “one day you will come back and we’ll change some worlds,” he boomed the end of his statement.

“One day,” she assured him, “I promise. And how is Doctor Calder?”

“I’m not sure,” Artie coughed and straightened in his seat. “Not much changed since the last time we spoke.”

“Goodness, Arthur,” she looked at him, amused, “when will you take the woman out?”

He blushed, then coughed again and mumbled something under his breath. “What about you? How’s William?” he changed the topic of the conversation quickly.

“Same as always,” she said with a knowing smile.

“The agreement?”

“Hard at work,” Helena nodded.

“One of my finest moments,” he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “So what brings you here?” he asked, straight to the point.

It was Helena’s turn to shift in her seat. It was not a comfortable thing for her to admit to, but she knew Artie would be the only one who would take her thoughts and experiences for what they were and not blow them out of proportion.

He drilled his look into her, his brown eyes searing hers with expectation.

“I’m…” Helena knew the words she wanted to say, and those words represented a deeply felt sentiment. Speaking them aloud, however, sounded juvenile to her. The words, she felt, did not do the depth of the sentiment justice. “I’m in love, Arthur.”

His bushy eyebrows shot up, revealing underneath them eyes that had in them nothing but fatherly surprise and concern. “I—I’m sorry,” he stuttered and cleared his throat. “You what?”

Helena exhaled impatiently. “I’m in love,” she enunciated the words clearly. She had hoped that saying these words out loud would be a relief, that speaking them to Artie would unwrap them of the angst that enveloped them, the angst that had been wrapping her for the past three weeks or so.

Artie blinked twice, then he blinked twice more. That was not something he’d expected from Helena. He blinked two more times, putting his thoughts in order. “I gather that it’s not William you’re in love with,” he stated, to verify his assumption.

Helena shook her head sombrely.

“Do you still love William?”

“I do,” Helena answered.

“And do you love this other person?”

“I don’t know her well enough to know if I love her,” Helena had already asked herself this. At least twice a week she would stand in front of her bathroom mirror and ask herself whether she loved Myka, and if so, what she loved about her. The answer was always the same – she didn’t know.

“But you’re _in_ love with her,” Artie checked.

Helena exhaled and closed her eyes in defeat.

“Hmmmm,” Artie hummed as he contemplated the issue, only to realise he wasn’t sure what it was. “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” Helena started and smiled tiredly, because what she was about to say sounded even more juvenile, “I haven’t felt this way since William.”

Artie hummed again and brought his mug to his lips. He appeared to have slipped into deep thought for a handful of seconds. “I still don’t understand what the problem is.”

Helena pursed her lips and pushed a sharp breath through her nose. She knew that Artie wouldn’t be a simple, sympathetic ear. She knew he wouldn’t _just_ take her side. That’s why she came to see him. Artie was a good, critical friend, and did a stupendous job of being one. “I haven’t been in love since William, Arthur,” she said, agitated, “this isn’t like me. I don’t know what to do with this…” she searched for the right word, “infatuation.”

“I’m getting old, HG,” he grumbled, “I can’t understand the riddle you’re trying to solve. I can’t even see that there’s a riddle _to_ solve. So you’re in love, so what?!” he exclaimed, shouted almost, and threw his hands in the air. “What are you afraid of? Having your heart broken? You’ve lived through a hundred of those ---“ he was about to go into another example in his tirade, but stopped. “Are you afraid that she won’t reciprocate? Are you afraid that you’ll lose William?” he added inquisitively.

Helena was gritting her teeth. She had tried to find out what it was that annoyed her so much about being in love. True, she hadn’t been in love in a long while, but that could all be down to the fact that she hadn’t had a lover in a while. So perhaps she had fallen out of practice with intimacy, with being in love. But _this_ lover… Well. This lover appeared to be so different than any other lover.

Artie jumped in his seat and leaned forward. “Are you afraid you will wind up like all those people who lay devastated in your wake? Are you worried that you will leave William for her and she won’t leave her husband? Are you worried that she will be the one to end the affair and not you?”

“I don’t know, Arthur,” she huffed and threw herself backwards, into the fusty, old chair. “Truth be told, I don’t know what it is about her that makes me so eager,” she realised that said eagerness was partly what was new to her about her feelings for Myka, or, rather, what was old about them. She hadn’t been eager about being involved with another person since the person she married.

“Yes you do, HG, you’re just lazy,” he smirked at her.

Helena scolded him with angry eyes, “I am many things, Arthur Nielsen; lazy is not one of them.”

“Fine, then,” he mocked her, his shoulders bouncing with his giggle, “you’re arrogant.”

“That I am,” she said and lifted her chin, looked about Artie’s office, studied the crumbling books, the fading letters on disintegrating spines. She tracked the trails where the sun, during the summer days, had faded the books more fiercely. She took a deep breath to end the long silence and looked back at Artie. He was still looking back at her from under his messy eyebrows and short, wiry, greying curls.

“I suppose I am shocked that I can even feel this way, after so many years,” she mused. “For almost ten years now William and I had been finding our fun, as it were, with others,” she spun the warm, plastic cup in her hand, “Others who had always served just that purpose – to have fun. I had not anticipated meeting someone who is…” she stopped when the thought of it hit her. She couldn’t bring herself to say those words, because they were hardly ever true.

“Who is what?” Artie urged her after a short while, drawing Helena, whose attention appears to have drifted elsewhere, back into the conversation.

She looked at him with eyes that were equal parts angry, hurt and confused.

“Don’t look at me like an injured puppy, HG, you started this,” he chortled at her.

“Who is my perfect match,” Helena said dryly.

Artie started laughing.

“What’s funny?” Helena asked.

“You…” Artie was laughing, properly laughing. Helena was stunned and annoyed in front of him. “You’re much smarter than this, HG,” he said as he caught his breath and wiped his eyes, “surely, you realise that this was statistically possible.”

“Possible, yes,” she answered confidently, “but rather improbable.”

“Well, then,” he sunk back into his seat with a contented sigh, “consider yourself lucky,” he threw his hand up in a dramatic gesture before picking his mug up to take a sip and let the soothing drink warm him into peaceful nap.

As Helena watched her dear friend set into slumber she considered his words. She contemplated how to make being in love with Myka a non-problem. She considered whether she could spin her captivation with Myka and their relationship to another sentiment – gratitude, perhaps – because Artie was right. Finding someone who matched her so well was extraordinarily lucky.

And Helena wanted to make the most of her good fortune.


	9. VIII. (33 weeks previous)

Helena was at the reception desk of a hotel in Andover when her phone buzzed. Because she was mid transaction with the receptionist, she chose to ignore the incessant drone.

Then it buzzed again.

And then it buzzed a third time, only this time it was a call rather than a text message.

“I beg your pardon,” she excused herself and took a few steps to the side to deal with what was obviously an important issue. It was Myka calling. She swiped the screen and brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Are you at the reception desk?” Myka spoke quietly, her voice just about discernible above the hubbub of background noise where she was.

“I am,” Helena half smiled, pleased that Myka knew her and their routine so well by now.

“I managed to convince my boss to let me stay for the second day of the conference…” Myka tapered off, hoping Helena would pick up the hint, it being that Myka wasn’t planning to return to her home that evening.

“Do you need a room for the night, then?” Helena offered, without making assumptions.

“I thought we could…” Myka said, then paused, “you know, share. If you want to.”

Helena smirked and bit her lip quickly. “Not a problem,” she said, “I’ll leave you a key at reception.”

“I’ll pay you back when I get there,” Myka stated.

“Don’t be silly.”

* * *

Helena went into the room, a twin, and began unpacking her things. Myka asking to have their meeting in Andover suited her down to the ground, as she was due in Concord, NH, the next morning for a gallery opening that one of her magazines sponsored.

She hadn’t planned on sharing her room with Myka, though. She knew Myka was attending a conference in the city, but had assumed that she would leave at the end of the evening, much like she had done every other time they had met.

Spending nights with her lovers was not something Helena was strictly against, yet it wasn’t a habit she fostered, either. There was a practical reason for that too. Helena needed her space. She didn’t particularly like being cuddled at the best of times, let alone at the end of a romp. She liked having the freedom and time to either savour her encounters or get on with her day, neither of which required the presence of her lovers. That, and the fact that she never developed the sort of sentimentality towards her lovers that would have inspired cuddling.

Helena had made the judgement that Myka wasn’t the cuddling or cuddled type either, and appeared to be similar to Helena in that that she, too, needed her own space. That conclusion was stamped by her experiences with Myka and how she conducted herself throughout and after their time together.

She stepped into the hot shower playing devil’s advocate to her own excitement. Was her judgement that Myka was like her an objectively-reached deduction, or was it wishful thinking on Helena’s part, her fascination with Myka compromising her logic?

As she was recounting arguments for and against, it suddenly bothered her that Myka was, still, mostly a mystery to her. More than anything, it bothered her that she was bothered by this.

While washing her hair, Helena decided to distract herself with how different the evening could be to all other evenings they spent together, knowing that they had all night. After all, every single encounter they shared ended when it was time for Myka to leave. It was always the combination of distance and time that dictated when their time was up. That night, however, neither distance nor time held power over them.

_Time has no consequence tonight_ , Helena summarised to herself, once. Then again; then again. _Tonight_ , Helena thought, _I have all the time in the world_.

The very thought of having time turned Helena’s smile sweet and spicy. She paced herself through her evening routine, slipped into her sleep clothes and curled up in one of the beds with a book until Myka arrived.

Myka walked in at the usual time, entered the room in a hurry, placed her briefcase on the desk, already shucking out of her jacket as she turned to greet Helena with a brief, yet courteous hello.

The sight of a rather differently looking Myka sent Helena to her feet. She rushed to Myka and pulled the jacket back up her arms.

“What’re you doing?” Myka asked, miffed, trying to fight Helena off, trying to get undressed.

Helena bit her lower lip seductively as she eyed Myka, dressed and made up to perfection. She was wearing a dark, three-piece pin-striped suit with a high collared, white top underneath, her hair was pulled up to a ponytail, only a handful of stray curls loose, strategically framing her face. She had eyeliner on, and mascara and lip-gloss and rouge. Myka looked impeccable and crisp and official and it turned Helena on.

“It is trite, I know,” Helena said, “but you look so proper…” she pulled Myka’s jacket atop her shoulders and straightened its front. She regarded Myka, head to toe, then leaned into her and looked up – Myka was quite taller than usual – she was wearing heels.

Helena reached behind her, placed her hand in the middle of Myka’s back to help prop herself up and as she stretched on her toes to whisper in Myka’s ear. “You look so proper that I would like to take my time ruining you,” she whispered, “and I have the luxury of time today.”

Myka growled a short laugh and placed a supporting hand under Helena’s backside. “Ruin me, huh?”

Helena hummed with a slow nod and brought her other hand to the cleavage of Myka’s shirt, fingertips dancing under the edges of stiffly ironed cotton. “Corrupt,” Helena enunciated richly into Myka’s ear while pressing her torso into the tall woman’s.

Myka pulled Helena closer with a sigh, dipping her fingers in the black ink of Helena’s hair, holding her head to her.

“Debauch,” Helena’s lips were on Myka’s ear, her tongue tickling its outline.

“I’m not so pure, you know,” Myka husked and pulled the hand she had behind Helena up, to tuck it into the back of Helena’s pants, to feel the warmth at the small of her back.

“Deprave,” Helena’s fingers at Myka’s chest slid down to find the buttons of the white shirt, deftly freeing them from fabric, one at a time, lingering her touch on the skin she unveiled as plastic parted from corresponding loopholes.

“Helena,” Myka closed her eyes and let the leisurely tickle of Helena’s fingers awaken her skin. The speed of Helena’s touch, or lack thereof, proved to her that time was, indeed, a luxury, and it felt wonderful to just take long, deep breaths and let Helena take her time taking her.

Helena was weighing her options during the ritual of unfastening Myka out of her authoritative look, as her fingers reached the double-breasted waistcoat and the remaining two buttons of her shirt. When those were undone, the layers of clothing fell open to reveal the pale expanse of Myka’s abdomen. Helena flattened her palms and spread her fingers across Myka’s belly to absorb the heat, to bask in the softness.

Myka gasped, the cool of Helena’s fingers only heating her further, and she pulled her lover closer once more. She knew they had all night – all evening then all night – but what Helena was doing right that moment… Myka needed it to finish soon, or… or…

“Ravish,” Helena spoke again, before placing her hot mouth on Myka’s lips, cool fingers journeying around Myka and up her back, to the clasp of her bra, skilfully rendering it and the garment to which it belonged useless. Those same cool fingers quickly tucked themselves between silk and skin, parting bra from breasts and indulging in plump, smooth flesh and fast hardening peaks.

Myka moaned into the kiss and pulled Helena to her, again. Helena broke the kiss and pushed Myka away at her breasts, granting the tall woman a squeeze that skirted the borders of painful, then soothed the pain with open mouthed kisses to the crook of Myka’s neck.

Helena spun them and pushed Myka backwards until her backside hit the edge of the desk. “Let me unfix you,” she pushed Myka further still, until the tall woman was sitting on the edge of the desk with Helena between her legs, asserting her presence over Myka with playful lips and tongue across salty, flushed skin.

“I think…” Myka started but a bite at the base of her neck distracted her, and the hand that was teasing the small of Helena’s back travelled to the front of Helena’s pants. “I really thi…” she started again, but lips were titillating underneath her jaw and fingertips were teasing her nipples and her own hand was slowly making its way to the apex of Helena’s thighs. “I need a shower,” she gasped, her sentence finished with a high-pitched moan when Helena bit where jaw met neck and her own hands clenched – one in Helena’s hair, the other on her thigh.

“Nonesense,” Helena murmured into Myka’s neck, “you need no such thing,” kisses travelling up and around, towards her other ear, her hands travelling down quickly, tackling the remaining buttons of Myka’s suit, those at the top of her trousers.

“I smell…” Myka tried to explain that she’d been on her feet most of the day, rushing from panel to panel through hordes of people and booths of suppliers, and there was no way she smelled anywhere near sexy.

“You smell delightful,” Helena said and breathed Myka in at the nape of her neck, sweet, sweaty, musky Myka (not unlike her scent at the end of their sessions), “and you taste…” she said and suckled on soft skin there, “…delectable,” she finished and brought herself to face her lover.

Their eyes were level. Helena could see the want in Myka’s eyes. Myka could see the desire in Helena’s.

“The only thing you need,” Helena pulled the zip of Myka’s trousers down and yanked at their sides forcefully to create a bit of space, “is this,” she snaked her hand in between Myka’s legs, pushed her underwear to the side, and slipped her fingers inside her.

Myka’s eyes fell shut, and her head fell forward, and a loud moan fell from her lips followed by wisps of words of encouragement. Her world was falling away from her as she was enticed further into her safe, parallel existence in Helena’s arms, at Helena’s mercy.

As Helena moved inside her, Myka slid her own hand between Helena’s legs and parted her, to feel slick arousal coat her fingers, feel Helena’s throaty acceptance of her touch, feel Helena shift ever so slightly so she could thrust against Myka’s hand at the same pace she was thrusting inside Myka.

For a while, moving against each other, sharing breath, whispering the names of deities and each other was enough. But then Helena lifted her head and opened her eyes, and Myka followed suit.

Myka’s face that was flushed and free, and her eyes that were begging Helena to not stop, and her lips were moving, she was saying something between breaths, between ‘God’s and ‘Helena’s, words that sounded a lot like ‘I want you’.

And Helena, who knew she was wanted, who _always_ knew she was wanted – by William, by every single one of her lovers – needed to know that Myka wanted her, even though Myka _had_ her. Right that very moment, Myka had her in every possible way and wanted her _still_ … and Myka’s want felt like her own want for Myka was mirrored, and she could not stop herself whispering her want in return, only to lean in and take Myka’s lips in a kiss; lean in to her touch a little bit deeper; lean in and curl inside her and take them that little bit further.

And Myka, who thought she found everything she could ever ask for in a lover, who thought that over the past four and half months she had learned some things about sex and about Helena, loved that Helena could surprise her, loved that Helena could derail whatever idea Myka may have had in favour of a much better idea altogether. She loved how Helena executed her ideas.

It was while Helena kissed her with fervour, with passion, with meaning, that she processed Helena was saying ‘I want you’, that she realised she’d been saying that herself all that time. And even after the ripples of their orgasm subsided and the rock of their bodies was all but still, the kiss didn’t ebb. Its passion didn’t wane. Its meaning didn’t fade.

Myka’s stomach rumbling disturbed the blissful intensity of the moment.

“Are you hungry?” Helena asked softly, her forehead against Myka’s, lips still touching in between breaths.

Myka smiled coyly and blushed fiercely through a small nod. She had planned to get something to eat on the way but she forgot because of… well… _this_ , what she was having that moment; and Helena would surely read right through her, right through her excitement and keenness and eagerness, which meant Myka would pay for it in some torturous yet pleasurable way.

“Are you blushing?” Helena grinned devilishly. _She is an odd one_ , Helena thought to herself. _Blushing because she’s hungry, even though her hand is still…_

“You’re not allowed to mock me right now, Helena,” Myka retorted in an attempt to regain the upper hand and moved her fingers, still inside Helena, ever so slightly.

Helena answered with a sharp gasp and hard grind into Myka’s hand, which, in turn, pressed her own fingers deeper into Myka, who pressed her lips shut to choke a moan. “I believe neither of us is in a position to mock the other,” Helena said and bit her lip.

She then looked at Myka for a moment before picking up a new, slower pace.

Myka looked back at her and for the whole of half a second thought that _I’m hungry, dammit, and I need to fuel up if I want to have more of this amazing sex tonight_ , but Helena’s eyes were black, completely black, Myka would swear it, and she was biting her lip like _that_ , and Myka can’t have Helena biting her own lip, so she dipped her head to snag Helena’s lip between her own teeth and gave in to the rhythm that Helena started.

For a long while after that Myka wasn’t thinking at all. Not about how hungry she was, not about the shooting pain in her ankles from having been on heels all day, not about the dull ache in her ass from being wedged against the edge of a desk, not about whatever had happened during the day or what might happen tomorrow. All that existed in the whole of the universe were Helena and her, and the forces of friction and suction. Most importantly – in that new universe – there was no such thing as time.

Or so it felt until Helena to needed to feel more of Myka so she peeled her jacket, waistcoat and shirt off with a single, sharp tug, exposing Myka’s shoulder and breast. As Helena’s busied her mouth with uncovered skin, something in Myka’s mind stirred, “I need to wear this suit tomorrow,” she commented absent-mindedly between hard breaths, between kisses placed on Helena’s shoulder.

Helena chuckled against Myka’s skin, _odd one, indeed_ , she thought before moving her lips up to Myka’s earlobe, before leaning more of her weight onto Myka so that the heel of Myka’s hand pushed against her sex _just_ right.

Helena came again, gently vocalising jagged breaths as she slowed down, riding the aftershocks of her climax with grace and ease. She then gave Myka’s wrist a small squeeze and detached herself from her lover.

She was still standing between Myka’s legs, she was still inside Myka. But Myka hadn’t come again, not yet, anyway. Myka’s body was still responding to Helena’s touch, but her face was telling a different story: her eyebrows were drawn together, her jaw was slack and head slightly tilted. Helena wasn’t sure whether Myka was still excited, or whether her conscience (that hadn’t troubled them in their act with its judgement and guilt since the fourth or fifth time they were together) had suddenly kick-started again, and was subduing Myka’s passion.

“Do you want to?” Helena whispered richly after a minute of observing the tall woman, before she turned her attention to lacing her neck with kisses.

“Want what?” Myka asked curtly, completely unaware that the attention she was garnering had taken the form of concern.

“Do you want to come?” Helena purred into the base of Myka’s neck.

Myka exhaled a low, uncomfortable laugh and raised her hips as much as she could to meet Helena’s hand. She didn’t know the answer. Frankly, she didn’t even want to think about it, or think about anything at all. She wanted to stay in her universe like _that_ , with Helena and friction and suction and time having no meaning, because _fuck, if I die right now, I’ll die the happiest person on earth._

And because time had no meaning, she let the question hang mid-air, like a dandelion seed caught between sparring breezes. She then leaned backwards, propped by her hands on the desk, and let her body dictate what it wanted without her mind getting in the way.

Helena watched her, transfixed by how alluring Myka looked, with raw, dusky, pink lips; with white teeth worrying her lower lip; with half-lidded green eyes; with flushed cheeks and neck and chest; with shimmering skin, tiny beads of sweat, radiant in the soft light of the hotel room, luminescence that covered her chest and abdomen and breasts, peaked with dark, strained nipples.

Then Myka opened her eyes and her lips curved to a semi-satisfied smile as she reset the tempo. And just like that, Helena was aroused again, missing Myka’s touch.

“I don’t care if I come,” Myka panted through her smile. She felt she owed Helena an answer for her question.

Helena’s eyes grew wider with a sensation that tugged at her gut, at her heart, reminding her that she thought, a while back, that Myka could be a formidable lover if only she found the joy in the touch, in the act, without the prospect of an orgasm. Myka seemed so content in Helena’s touch, that Helena could practically feel the world of exciting opportunities opening to her, to _them_ , and Helena could not wait to explore it.

“Can we just continue…” Myka started asking but stopped when she changed how she moved against Helena, short thrusts exchanged for long, drawn out glides.

Myka stirred Helena back to the present from the avalanche of plans and ideas her mind had begun tumbling through. “Of course,” she said with a nod that matched Myka’s pace, biting the inside of her cheek, batting away her own need at the sight of Myka being so unashamedly wanting and demanding.

It could have been minutes or hours (it didn’t matter because time didn’t exist in that room) for Myka to savour the pleasure she took from Helena, who had forgotten how tantalising it was to take pleasure in pleasuring another.

Myka’s movements subsided, eventually, her breathing settled, her muscles relaxed. She opened her eyes to see Helena standing between her spread legs, hands on her thighs, looking at her with that cocky grin of hers.

She pulled herself up, straightened her back and her neck so she could kiss Helena, kiss her like she kissed her earlier – with meaning, with sentiment. And while Myka didn’t know what Helena’s sentiment in that kiss was, Myka’s was gratitude. “Thanks,” she whispered shyly as she drew the kiss to a close.

Helena started another and brought her hands to cradle Myka’s cheeks. “Oh, believe me, darling,” she kept the kiss light and responsive, gentle trapping of lips in lips, “the pleasure is all mine,” she punctuated her words with small nips through a small, soft smile.

Something happened to Myka that moment, the moment that Helena so honestly shared appreciation to what they just had. Myka felt reassured that it was okay for her to be selfish, that it was okay take without giving, because Helena had wanted to touch her, wanted to have Myka take pleasure from her. Myka couldn’t tell which thought touched her more, the reassurance she was allowed to take, or that Helena wanted her to.

And among the gratitude and appreciation and understanding and freedom, something else begun growing, a seedling of an emotion raising a curious stem and straightening virginal leaves. But she couldn’t bring herself to deal with _that_.

The shy blush returned to Myka’s cheeks and she held on to Helena for one more moment, acknowledging the new sensations she recognised. She also recognised a distinct twitching in her muscles, one that alerted her for the need to move. Slowly, she began testing the range of motion in her hips and legs and arms.

She chose to address the pain that radiated from her calf muscles and glutes, because the alternative would be to focus on the realisation that sex with Helena wasn’t just sex anymore. The alternative would be to admit that sex with Helena was never really sex without emotion, that she always had feelings towards that beautiful, dark stranger and that those feelings made the sex even bigger and better and more free; and those feelings had only been growing.

And while reluctant to name those feelings, label them with something she knew was big and cumbersome, a label that would surely taint the privilege and abandon with which they touched each other, she was assured with a sensation that – on some level – her feelings were reciprocated.

* * *

While Myka was finally treated to a shower, Helena arranged for the concierge service to pick up her suit to be cleaned and pressed and ordered them both some room service. As she curled back on the bed wither book, much like she had been a few hours earlier, she felt a sense of familiarity, of domesticity, even, of all things. Sitting on a bed, waiting for Myka to come out of the shower so they can share dinner.

The irony hadn’t slipped past her, either. The hotel room was far too impersonal to be considered any kind of domicile. But for Myka and her, this was the home of their relationship because it had been exclusively kept to hotel rooms such as this.

With the exception of the first two times they had met, of course. And it occurred to Helena that since then, four and a half months had gone by, and during that time they hadn’t talked much beyond physical needs, preferences or banter.

Myka emerged from the bathroom wearing a workout tank top and a towel around her waist. She was incessantly drying her hair with another towel. She felt refreshed and re-energised, almost to a point where she would be okay to contend with the notion she had feelings for Helena. “This looks nice,” she smiled at dark-haired woman, in her underwear and a loose yoga top, who looked comfortable against a mountain of pillows by the headboard. She gave her hair a final shake.

“I reckon anything would look nice to you by now,” Helena straightened and pulled the room service plates to the centre of the bed.

Myka placed herself on her side, across the bottom of the bed, facing Helena, two plates of sandwiches and chips between them. She grabbed a chip and took a bite. “How stupid would it sound if I said I wasn’t talking about the food?” she asked through a foolish grin.

“Not stupid,” Helena leaned forward to take a chip as well, “but more banal, perhaps.”

Myka looked down and chuckled, picking at the plate neatest to her. “Yeah, I was never much of a flirt.”

She looked up at Helena after no response came for a long minute. Helena was grinning widely, brightly, flashing white teeth, supressing a laugh.

“What?” Myka enquired casually, feeling another blush creeping up her cheeks, Helena was being cavalier again, and she was poking fun at her.

“You have many talents, darling,” Helena picked up a sandwich, still grinning like a Cheshire cat, “of which I’ve only caught the smallest glimpse, I’m sure,” she took a bite, keeping her eyes in Myka’s. “Flirting, I’m afraid, is not one of them,” she added with the same bright smile.

Myka chewed on her sandwich silently, well aware that she was still blushing because the only talents Helena would know of were strictly limited to what they did in evenings like that one. “I guess I haven’t had as much practice,” she jabbed back with a smile of her own.

Helena’s jaw dropped. Once again, Myka proved that she was a fearless sparring partner who was not afraid to deal as hard as she was given. “Touché,” she muttered, mock offended, “you seem to be catching up, though.”

Myka’s smile brightened and she exchanged an amused gaze with Helena while eating. Myka had missed this, having a conversation with Helena. They had only had two proper conversations – the first two times they had met – and Myka remembered feeling that she and Helena had a lot in common. For Myka, though, both conversations were tinted with a sizable dollop of stress, because those meetings had a purpose, and that purpose was to gauge if there was sufficient chemistry between them to merit taking their involvement further.

Myka felt back-footed on both occasions. Helena always seemed so at ease with everything and Myka was so nervous – a fact that left many of Myka’s questions unasked. Namely, the conclusion that she wasn’t Helena’s first extramarital lover, given how comfortable Helena had been with the practicalities of beginning and maintaining an affair. And yet, she knew that Helena was still married. To a husband. Something that, in itself, knocked some curious questions about. _Now is as good a time as any, then_ , she convinced herself.

“I’m not your first, am I?” Myka asked plainly, looking squarely into Helena’s eyes, not one to beat around the bush.

“First what?” Helena asked to clarify what it was Myka was after.

“First affair,” Myka picked up the other half of her sandwich. It felt a bit odd to her, that she can be asking this so casually.

“What gave it away?” Helena answered with her usual aloof arrogance.

“How casual you are about all this,” Myka got up to get them both some water. “How easy it’s been for you from the first minute you saw me,” she handed Helena a cupful. “This is definitely not your first rodeo.”

Helena smiled at the colloquialism and watched Myka watching her for a moment. “It most definitely is not my first rodeo,” she said and her smile faded a bit, brash confidence replaced with a tinge of cautious self-awareness. She wondered what spurred this conversation and where it was going.

Myka gestured to the space next to Helena, by the headboard. “Would you mind?” she asked.

Helena shook her head and scooted over, to give Myka more room next to her. Myka sat down, lotus style, facing Helena.

“Can I ask a really blunt question?” Myka asked again, a bit more quietly than before. She sought Helena’s eyes to gain permission. “You don’t have to answer though, because it’s kind of personal.”

“May I hear it first?” Helena cocked an eyebrow, trying to keep her guard up. Deep, meaningful or personal conversations were close to  being forbidden with lovers. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t allowed these conversations to happen, it was more so that none of her lovers took an interest beyond the standard parameters of an affair. Those who did initiate personal conversations were the ones who got too clingy. Helena would have preferred if that was not the case with Myka.

“Did you ever imagine that this was what marriage would wind up being?” Myka asked, matter of fact, and fell silent afterwards., waiting for Helena to answer.

Helena was silent. She was busy considering the outcomes of this thread of conversation.

“I mean…” Myka looked down, to where her hands fell. “Before you got married, and when you were first married… Did you entertain the idea that one day you’ll be sleeping with other people because your life was boring or your husband wasn’t good enough anymore?” she mused, then hastened to cite the source of her assumption, “Based on what you told me that time, that these are the two reasons people have affairs.”

Helena listened patiently to Myka and considered – again – where this was coming from and where this was going. Myka was asking her a question she had never really considered. She guessed that Myka’s conscience had been playing on her heart again and this was her way to manage the impact. Myka was attempting to gain perspectives and use logic to unravel the moral entanglement their affair had created.

As Helena began contemplating the answer, she was reminded by the fluttering in her stomach that this was a different kind of intimacy Myka was initiating, the kind of intimacy that could change her heart about Myka or – possibly worse – turn the infatuation into a more deeply-felt emotion.

She began with a thoughtful hum, and then took a breath. “No, I did not,” she looked at Myka for a moment, hoping that a simple answer would satisfy her, but Myka was looking at her patiently. She sighed. “When I married William, we were both so young and ambitious. We fed off of each other’s experiences and enthusiasm. We believed that together we could achieve anything we set our minds to. And in many ways, we did.”

“What happened?” Myka enquired.

“Life happened,” Helena’s smile turned sad. “His career drove him places, my career drove me other places. Along the way we both made plenty of choices and mistakes that took their toll on us as individuals and on the relationship. Even though we functioned incredibly well as a couple, our relationship reached a point where we could barely stand to be in each other’s presence anymore.”

Myka released a wry laugh. That sounded familiar. Although she and Giselle  weren’t a power couple the way Helena and William seemed to be, they had a very well-functioning partnership. To people on the outside, their marriage looked harmonious and synchronised. But that was all superficial. There was nothing underneath the smooth exterior anymore. Their clockwork efficiency was all that was left of their relationship, and even that was entirely powered by Myka these days.

“Then we both realised the other was having an affair, and decided to renegotiate the terms of our marriage,” Helena explained, Artie’s term falling from her lips almost as if it were patented and presented to a panel of experts, as if she had been showcasing it to people for years.

“How did you do that?” Myka was truly curious because this was something she wished she could do with Giselle, but Giselle never really listened. Or maybe she did, but chose not to respond to what Myka was saying, chose not to act on it or take it further.

“We each brought up what we wanted from the other, and then discussed what we were able and willing to give back,” Helena explained the tactics plainly.

_Sounds simple enough_ , Myka thought, _to people who knew what they wanted_. Gi, however, did not.

“We agreed that we can only be in close quarters for so long,” Helena took a sip of water. “We agreed that intimacy no longer extended past conversation. We agreed that we still loved each other as friends and partners, but not as lovers. We agreed that whatever we could not grant each other physically, we could seek outside the marriage. We agreed to never keep those a secret from each other.”

Myka nodded. “I tried to do that with my par… with Giselle,” she corrected herself. Helena and she were not being vague anymore. They were being very precise. “But she didn’t want to hear about it. She kept saying that she wouldn’t share me, but didn’t propose an alternative.”

Helena smiled. On one hand, she could understand how someone who had won Myka over would be reluctant to share her. On the other, she knew damn well how lonely it was to share a life and a bed with someone who was no longer interested in her, someone who no longer carried an interest for her, either.

“It took two full rounds of couples’ therapy for her to be able to say that to me, and another round for me to realise she wasn’t going to budge,” Myka looked down again, feeling the weight of the admission. “She’d only said those things to her best friend until then. And while I get that I should be happy that I’m married to someone who’s that keen…” Myka looked back at Helena, and the sincerity of shared understanding that was echoed in Helena’s eyes knocked her off her kilter.

“It’s a very lonely place to be,” Helena completed her thought.

Myka smiled meekly. “I have a friend who’s been looking for someone to spend her life with,” she leaned her head against the headboard and looked at the ceiling. “She calls me up and complains about how lonely the dating scene is, and how she wished she was married. And then I complain about how lonely married life is and how I wished I was dating,” she ended with a brief, airy laugh.

“Sounds like a well-balanced friendship,” Helena said and removed their plates from the bed.

Myka smiled. “It is.”

Helena climbed back on the bed, laying on her side, with her head propped by a folded arm, looking at Myka, who appeared to be in a world of her own. So she closed her eyes and thought about being in love with this odd, curious woman; one who blushed because her stomach is rumbling, one who was no longer ashamed to enjoy being touched, one who craved the companionship of physical intimacy, not just the gratification is offers.

While the conversation resulted in Helena sharing more about her past than she usually had, it didn’t feel like the conversations had with lovers who turned. Myka wasn’t probing Helena for information that could potentially amass to the likelihood she was to leave her husband. Myka was trying to understand how other marriages worked alongside affairs, because she was still, evidently, conflicted.

There was something solid and authentic about Myka that Helena hadn’t experienced in years, or possibly ever. And it was that honesty that drew her to the curly-haired woman with whom she was sharing a bed.

Myka, on the other hand, was thinking about how she had changed over the time she had known Helena. She was trying to quantify the impact that being with Helena had had on her life, because for all the moral issues and guilt that she was carrying for stepping out on her marriage, having her relationship with Helena had made her significantly happier over the past few months.

When she posted that ad on that website, a part of her had wished she was wrong about the assumption that having an affair would make her happy, or at least relieved in some way. That part of her, the twenty-something-year-old who believed that love always triumphed, that cheating is wrong, that you should avoid hurting someone you loved at all cost, that if you reached a point where you felt you needed to cheat you would be better off breaking up the relationship – _that_ part so badly wanted the thirty-something-year-old, tired, jaded, lonely Myka to be wrong.

There must have been a reason why “older” and “wiser” go hand in hand, because in less than six months the younger, bright-eyed Myka was proven colossally wrong. Having this affair made Myka so much more than relieved. Myka was satisfied. Fulfilled. Happy. After five long, cold years of being rejected by her wife, Myka felt wanted, desired, even. The basic, physical need to be intimate with someone was answered, and then some. It has been superseded by how Helena gave Myka so much, How she gave Myka things she didn’t even know she wanted.

What had started as a “strictly business” relationship has grown to be a joyful, exciting, challenging playground where peers could give and take freely, and Myka realised just how much she’d learned about herself, how much she’d changed during the time she’d known Helena.

Myka looked down at Helena, peaceful, curled on her side, like a cat, asleep, and whispered “Thank you,” because Helena had given her so much more than great sex.

So, so much more.

* * *

Helena was stirred awake from deep sleep by a gentle kiss on her lips followed by a light nip and the feathery touch of fingers outlining her shoulder blades, and then travelling south. She hadn’t – not once – thought what it might be like to have Myka kiss her and touch her awake in the morning, to open her eyes and be greeted by those green, smiling eyes.

She hadn’t seen Myka’s eyes very often, and when she did, it was usually in dim lighting, which Helena now realised was a great shame. Myka’s irises were a mix of green and grey, and in brighter light, when her pupils shrunk, they revealed behind them an uneven hazel ring, like a solar corona.

Not only were they beautiful and unique, they were honest. A true window to the soul of their owner, and that squeezed Helena’s heart tightly, seized up her lungs, churned wildly deep within her stomach.

_You should know better_ , she chided herself as she pulled Myka to her, on top of her for a deep, slow and lingering kiss that melted into deep, slow and lingering touches that allowed her to express an emotion that she was not yet ready to form into words.

And Helena _should_ know better because she knew that she wasn’t just in love anymore. She knew that she was getting attached to another person other than William.

And _that_ felt like betrayal.


	10. IX. (31 weeks previous)

Helena was sitting by the coffee table of the spacious upper west side duplex, one of three residences she and Wolly owned in New York City. It was the first of the three they’d purchased, when William’s first company was bought over by a tech giant. It was one of their favourite homes and the one they used together most frequently. These days, 15 years on, they only used it together five, maybe six times a year, when they were both required  to attend social events or business meetings.  

This was such an occasion - an annual gathering of the Writer’s Guild, East, a venture they supported personally and professionally.

Helena and William planned to spend the following two days together.

Helena spent most of the morning tending to business, approving mocks, reading teasers and samples of the coming months’ issues, and reviewing the magazines’ books. She answered emails, sent a few; including one addressed to Myka, asking they arranged another overnight, two or three weeks after.

Helena had been playing their night together in her mind, how different the exchange between them had been. Having had time, the most precious of commodity, allowed them to play with their passions more slowly. Helena also relished the fact that they were able to _just_ spend time together. Share a meal and a few conversations. After all, one of the things that drew her to Myka was her intellect and opinions and how she articulated both (and Helena _does love_ a good conversation and a spirited debate. They fire her up in ways physical touch cannot).

There was an additional issue, one that Helena was keen to test further. Helena had grown to suspect that spending more time with Myka, time that didn't involve sexual congress, changed how she felt about her. She suspected that the better she grew to know Myka, the more attracted to Myka she became, the more affection she felt.

She knew with every fibre of her being that this was a dangerous premise to introduce to their relationship, and considered if it warranted introducing at all. After all, the purpose for which they were meeting was their mutual physical exploration and gratification, and they were enacting that purpose exceptionally well, still, nearly six months after they began.

Whatever emotional attachment she may be developing, Helena thought, was irrelevant to Myka. She had no expectation that Myka returned the affection. Given Myka’s responses, Helena had firm reason to believe that Myka wasn't free from emotional investment herself, but at that moment, she felt there was no need for her to mar their meetings with the angst of whether or not feelings were requited.

_Frankly_ , Helena said to herself coldly, forcing rationalism and pragmatism into the driver’s seat of her decision making, _the physical fascination is amply requited which, given how highly compatible we are, is more than enough_.

Pleased with her conclusion, she leaned back in the armchair, cradled her tea and inhaled its soothing, earthy scent.

“Please tell me you brewed a pot of it,” William grunted softly from across the cavernous living space, having managed to walk down the staircase without incurring accident or injury. “God, why must I enjoy the fizzy wines so much?” he asked rhetorically while shielding his eyes from the light pouring in from the tall windows.

Helena smiled knowingly and poured her husband a cup from the plain porcelain pot on the table.

“Not a word, dear wife,” he leaned forward slowly to fetch the cup, then straightened equally slowly, holding it to his chest and closing his eyes. “I know that look in your eye, and I know you have a witty comment about my age and/or how I never could hold my liquor.” He paced carefully around the coffee table and placed himself precariously in the middle of the L shaped sofa that spanned it, overlooking the duplex’s double height windows, displaying a far-too-bright view of the tree tops of Central Park and the buildings of Fifth Avenue beyond them.

“Darling Wolly,” Helena sniggered quietly. “How dull would our lives still be if our conversations played out in real life the way they do in your head.” She smiled knowingly and looked at him, in his terrible, hungover state, the most dishevelled he would ever be. Her heart sang for him.

A long smile stretched across William’s face. He then let his head roll so he could look at Helena, at his wife, his chosen one for over two decades.

She was a stunning creature, Helena. Every bit as alluring now as she was when they met when they were 19. What he admired most about her beauty was how it changed with her age. How she managed to tame it just enough to make it look cultured as opposed to privileged. And while he was rarely physically attracted to her anymore, he did love her with all that he was.

He lifted his arm towards her, beckoning her to come to him. Helena looked at him suspiciously for a moment, but he repeated the gesture, emphasised it, and she acquiesced.

She got up from her armchair, walked around the table until William’s hand landed on her hip. “Are you sure you want me in your lap? In your delicate state?” she asked and weaved her fingers through his thick, short salt and pepper hair.

“Please, darling,” his fingers tugged gently at her side, and Helena leaned down and wedged herself by his side, wrapped in his arm with her head on his shoulder.

Helena closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of her husband, a scent that had barely changed since they met. Even when he was having those first affairs, before their agreement, William never smelled any differently no matter who he had been seeing.

This scent still induced a sense of home for Helena, a sense of belonging. And after a few weeks of working hard (and playing equally hard), being with William felt like an earnest break from it all. She relaxed into his warmth, closed her eyes and let her mind clear of all the things that cluttered it a few moments ago. Even Myka.

“How have you been keeping?” William asked, drowsily, after a few moments of blissful silence.

“Very well,” she answered, eyes still closed. “The magazines are doing well, we are finally hitting our stride with the print and digital parallel models. Sponsorships we are involved in still need some tweaking, but - all in all - the ships are holding course and braving the storms,” she debriefed him on matters that directly concerned him. She knew he would ask if she didn't continue. “I am also well. Still motivated and enthused, life does treat me well, Wolly,” she paused. “And you?”

“Much as always, darling,” he held her tighter and placed the tip of his nose on the crown of her head, where he could let her overwhelm his senses. “Life at the top can be rather lonely unless the residents of the fiefdom seek your favours,” he breathed her in and out slowly, attesting to his role as executive director of a number of organisations.

Helena knew immediately that this was an admission of loneliness at work, something William was mostly content with, until such times as he wasn’t. This often marked a time of transition for him. Whenever he got lonely at the top, he rearranged his holdings and often hers, to give himself a few months working closely with the people who were tasked with the day-to-day management of their assets. She wondered if this bout of loneliness was triggered by a change in his _other_ affairs. “How's Liam?” she asked.

William sighed deeply, but didn't answer for a while.

Helena’s eyes opened with concern. Something was obviously not going to Wolly’s plan, otherwise his answer would have decorated the room already.

When it failed to come out altogether, Helena extricated herself from William’s hold to look at him. His eyes were still closed, his breathing was deep and even. If it weren't for his other hand still gripping his tea, one might have assumed he was asleep.

“What happened, William?” she asked, worried, “What's wrong?”

He sighed again, knowing he really could not escape the topic, opened his eyes to look at his wife.

“What happened was what always happens with the likes of Liam. They get attached and in love and they seek exclusivity, and ask me to do the one thing I always tell them, from the get go, I will never do,” he reached his hand to cradle Helena’s cheek.

Helena’s face fell. This has happened with two of William’s lovers so far, Liam makes the third. Her husband, for all his winning features and strengths, had a type, and that type was the marrying kind.

“Darling,” she breathed and mirrored his caress. “I'm so sorry.”

“What is a man to do,” he said, “when he is blessed with his soulmate and best friend for a wife, but has needs he must satisfy elsewhere, without the wish for those needs to be domesticated.”

“What is a man considering, then?” she leaned into the back of the sofa, her shoulder leaning against her husband’s.

“A man has been placed in an awkward position whereby he was given a month to make a decision,” he sighed again and paused. “I don't believe I need to say this to you,” he reached to hold her hand tightly, “but I will not divorce you.”

He was right, Helena didn’t need to be told, but it made her heart flutter regardless. Helena smiled meekly and nudged his shoulder with hers. He was such a sentimental man. “Thank you, William. It's just such a shame.”

“Shame is the shadow of love, the poet once said,” he wrapped her in his arm again. They sat quietly for a while, sipping tea and listening to the bustle of midtown Manhattan rushing below them like a river.

“Do you love him, then?” Helena asked, almost absently, her own emotions peeking from under the tightly battened hatch of self-control.

William sighed again.

It occurred to Helena then that this was the first time since their arrangement that this question had come up. Helena herself was never faced with this situation, and William hadn't bat an eyelid with two of his former lovers who demanded he left Helena for them.

She considered how she might feel if Wolly’s answer was ‘yes’. Would she be hurt? Would she be sad? Would she consider changing the terms of their agreement? Would he?

The first three returned the same response, ‘not necessarily’, and she couldn't predict the fourth on William’s behalf.

How might she feel if he said ‘no’, then? Would she feel relief? Would she feel reassured? Would she feel happier? More confident?

Again, ‘not necessarily’ was the resounding response to all questions.

“I don't know,” he responded, almost in time with Helena’s thinking process reaching its conclusion, that William declaring his love for Liam would not necessarily be a tragedy.  

“Do you want to renegotiate?” Helena asked, wondering if that could help William be more decisive.

William took a moment to rethink Helena’s offer, whether there was anything they could arrange from their end that would help him decide what to do about his lover. “You are not the problem, Helena, not the way I look at it.”

“I hate to see you so conflicted,” she explained.

He had no answer. He was conflicted, true, he had grown so used to Liam (that’s how he chose to articulate it) that letting go of him now would be so much more than an inconvenience.

“How long has it been now?” she mused.

“Nearly 3 years.”

“Are you seeing anyone else?”

“Not since the early days. So, no. Not for a long time,” certainly the longest William had been true to a single lover.

“Do you not find it odd that he had become your long-term, steady partner?”

“But that is precisely what I'm unsure of, Helena,” he sighed again. “Is he my partner? Can he be to me what you are to me? Can he even come close?”

Helena found his method of assessing partnership intriguing. Could Myka be to her what William was to her? Could she be what William used to be? Could she come close? Myka, to her, meant experiencing a set of emotions, thoughts and sensations that William hadn't induced in her in years. Similarly, though, what William induced in her, Myka did not. If she considered them both in a calculating and utilitarian manner, William and Myka did not serve the same purpose at all. “Are you sure that is a fair comparison, darling?”

“Well, if Liam asks me to replace you with him, it's only fair to ask for a like-for-like replacement, at least. No?”

“If matters of the heart were a business transaction, Wolly,” she sighed and topped up both their teas. “Surely, over your time together Liam has come to fill voids that I cannot fill, simply out of the force of not being around you enough.”

“If I'm being honest, dear, the voids he fills are voids you never filled. And voids you've always filled are ones you still very much wholly occupy.”

Helena smiled. William had always managed to reach conclusions similar to hers but word them in a humanistic, poetic way.

“Why are you all cat that got the cream?” he noticed her smile.

“I share the sentiment to a tee, darling,” she sipped her tea and looked at him mischievously.

His whole demeanour changed in an instant. A spark lit in his eyes, his face flushed with a healthy, pink glow. He straightened where he sat and turned to face Helena. “Is this Myka?”

She nodded, her skin tingling with the mention of her lover’s name.

“Ooh, look at you, Hells Wells!” William short of taunted her, calling her by a nickname no one had dared to use since the Reagan era. “You're in love!”

“I am,” she admitted, looking at William for signs of anger or disappointment. She found none.

“You barely told me a thing about her,” he scolded, “that’s very bad of you.”

“That’s true, Wolly, you are right. You really don’t know much about her,” She sat back on the sofa, lotus style, and turned to face him. “How may I satisfy your curiosity?”

“Height?”

“178.”

“Build?”

“Athletic lean.”

“Ethnic persuasion?”

“Caucasian.”

“Hair?”

“Long, curly, dark brown.”

“Eyes?”

“Green and grey.”

“Demeanour?”

“Inquisitive.”

“Disposition?”

“Feisty.”

“Satisfying?”

“Quite.”

“Satisfied?”

“Increasingly so.”

“Strength?”

“Fearlessness.”

“Weakness?”

Helena thought for a moment, “Over thinker.”

“Disappointments?”

“None so far.”

“Surprising trait?”

“Playfulness.”

“Top or bottom?”

“Both.”

William, whose excitement increased with each answer, stopped abruptly with a dropped jaw. “Both?” his eyebrows were raised in surprise. “Surely she has a preference.”

Helena shook her head.

“Surely, then, you prefer her be one or the other,” he added devilishly.

Helena shook her head once more.

“True ambi-presence, then? A real utility player?”

Helena nodded with a light chuckle.

“Helena G. Wells, have you found your perfect lover?”

“No such thing,” Helena answered dismissively, not willing to fully engage with the question William was posing, because the depth of her affection to Myka might become glaringly apparent.

“Oh, bollocks, Helena, you know that's not true,” luckily for her, William was too excited to notice.

“While she has met every one of my expectations so far, one can never tell,” Helena couldn't bring herself to inject any emotion in her words, because that would be her undoing at the hands of her husband who knew her far too well.

William gasped. “Not even I met your expectations in bed,” he said with a laugh. “And I shared your bed for a decade. And how is she outside?” William pressed further, and the further he pressed, the less comfortable Helena grew.

“We rarely go outside,” was all Helena could say.

“You are still honeymooning at six months,” William jabbed. “That’s good,” he leaned back, and smiled smugly.

“What?”

“You don’t tend to hold on to your lovers past the honeymoon phase, and I, for one, would like to have to your long-term satisfaction seen to,” the smug smile hasn’t left his face. “Isn’t that my job as your husband, after all?” he finished with a cheeky smirk.

Helena humphed a pity chuckle. That was not how she saw things at all. “Isn’t the entire point of keeping lovers to reserve the right to be excited, so long as excitement exists, without the compromise that ensues? Isn’t the whole point of a lover to enjoy the good bits, and then part ways when they stop, so to not exert ourselves at the dull and dreary maintenance of a relationship?”

William looked at her as he gave the matter some thought. “If only matters of the heart were like maintaining a balance sheet,” he paraphrased her quip from earlier.

She cocked a half smile at him, recognising the variation on her theme. “If not a business transaction or a balance sheet, what are matters of the heart like?” she asked, only partly rhetorically.

“If I knew I would not be here nursing the hangover of the ages.”

Helena turned around and leaned her back into him, and he placed his arms around her.

“What I do know is that there is an expectation of immediate reciprocity of emotions the minute one party brings love into the mix,” he spoke, somewhat bitterly. “As though the moment he said ‘I love you’, he expected me to pay him back the same amount, with the same currency, right there and then.”

“He wanted a refund, not continued investment,” Helena took their analogy of financial transactions further, her mind beginning to wander through uncharted paths, considering what her expectations of Myka were if she was to confess her affection.

“Exactly!” he agreed enthusiastically, “That’s why I love you so much, Helena,” those words fell from his lips so easily, purposefully defiant to the topic and questions it raised. “You get it. You just get it. Even if you don’t believe in it, you know what I mean, and you get it. And unlike so many other relationships, you and I,” he craned his neck to catch his wife’s brown eyes, “you and I are continually investing.”

She looked into his cool, blue eyes and couldn’t help but smile. William and she might not have been having sex with each other; they may not even be attracted to each other anymore. But they were invested in each other. They understood one another in a way very few people understood their significant others, let alone other people. They shared true familiarity, true kinship. The affinity they felt for each other transcended the physical manifestation of love. The intimacy they shared ran deep, based on years of feasts and famines, wins and woes; all of which created a bond between them, fixed by shared beliefs and values.

Their marriage might have lost its sexual domain, but its emotional, intellectual and spiritual domains were flourishing. And the older they got, it seemed, the wider, better and more beautiful those domains had become.

“So long as there is an expectation that one expressed their love equally and immediately once the other had stated it…” William carefully constructed the rule, “So long as there is the expectation that love is immediately refunded upon pay-out, I struggle to see the relationship as sustainable.”

“Any relationship, or yours with Liam?” Helena enquired.

“Any relationship,” William answered after a short pause. “It is so rare that two humans share the same emotion, at the same strength and frequency at the exact same moment in time as their counterpart. And --” he was cementing his argument, “isn’t love meant to be founded on trust? Should that trust extend to the sentiment the other should know one harbours for them without it being verbally and continually asserted?”

His words burned into Helena like a hot iron. If her love for Myka was growing, did she foster the expectation that Myka loved her back? As her love for Myka was evolving, was she expecting or even hoping that Myka’s love for her did the same? Helena only had her intellect to apply to these hypotheses, because she never had to consider this aspect of an affair from this perspective.

She did know that when her own lovers told her they loved her, told her they would leave their husbands and boyfriends and wives for her, they had expected her to reciprocate the emotion. They had – at least – expected her to consider reciprocating it, even though Helena had been clear about the nature of the affair and her rules for it from the get-go. And yet, enough of them saw it fitting to burden her with expectations. And that, in turn, led to the demise of those affairs.

_Would I need Myka to reciprocate my love?_ Helena pondered after William excused himself to shower and dress, so they could go for lunch. ‘Not necessarily’ was, once more, the categorical response.

_So long as the exchange with Myka continues to develop the way that it has_ , Helena thought, she didn’t need the added emotional investment. The physical investment was highly rewarding as it was, and emotional investment carried to much inherent risk.

There was no need to bring love into it.


	11. X. (29 weeks previous)

Helena was reacquainting her lips with the length of Myka’s sides after they shared dinner.

It was an easier dinner than the one they shared previously, on the first night they spent together. Conversation was lighter in both tone and topic and mostly spanned Great Artists and why we rarely experience them as such during their lifetime.

It was also the reason why Myka was on her back, spread eagle, giving Helena free run of her body. Myka had, perhaps foolishly, or perhaps the very opposite, placed a series of bets against Helena’s knowledge of contemporary artists. Her loss forfeited the two hours that followed to Helena’s whims and wishes.

As Helena tasted the smooth, salty skin under and to the side of Myka’s breast she resigned herself to the fact that Myka had played her like finely tuned violin. Myka seemed to play to win, appeared truly annoyed and disappointed each time Helena had gained the upper hand. But Helena knew, while dealing Myka soft bites on the supple flesh of her breast, by her wanton gasps and quiet mewls for more, that Myka wanted her to win.

In any other circumstances, Helena, who was known in professional circles as viciously competitive but vehemently fair, would have felt somewhat cheated. Under these circumstances, however, she didn't care an ounce. Her competitiveness and fairness, it turned out, had circumstance-dependent settings. And the current circumstances were the kind that switched them off.

Eventually, when Myka stopped biting her lips and let her breathing and exclamations thicken the air of the hotel room, Helena rewarded her with lips and tongue, and Myka, in turn, rewarded Helena with a long, intense and rather loud climax that Helena enjoyed every bit as Myka did.

Helena loved it when Myka let go of her inhibitions and vocalised her orgasms. Not only was this a welcomed caress of Helena’s vain ego, but it was also proof of Myka’s journey, proof of how much she had changed during their time together; proof that Myka was kicking the habit of coming in silence next to her sleeping, disinterested wife.

Pleased with her effort, Helena slid up Myka's body and casually checked the bedside alarm clock. She had an hour and ten minutes left, and she fully intended on making the most of them.

Helena knew by now that Myka preferred to have a break, to touch Helena for a while as her own body reset. But Myka had lost the game on purpose and Helena felt she ought to take advantage of that.

She trailed kisses, light, feathery kisses up Myka’s skin, flushed and damp and sensitive; it twitched and fluttered under her lips and Myka whimpered helplessly beneath her.

She let her tongue and teeth test the boundaries between pain and pleasure, first on Myka’s abdomen, then on the soft mounds of her breasts, then on her nipples.

And then her kisses became ghostly, barely there, barely felt, as she travelled up Myka’s neck. By the time Helena reached Myka’s lips she had approximately 50 minutes left, which would be just enough time for Helena to execute the remainder of her plan.

Helena dragged dry lips leisurely across Myka’s cheek and pulled back shy of her lips. She took a moment to look at Myka, expectant, gasping, needy. Then she leaned in and kissed her lover deeply, teasing her lips, almost torturing them, but touching her nowhere else.

Myka hummed with urgency, trying to speak but Helena wouldn't let her. Helena stole Myka’s words with her kisses as much as she did her breath, because she refused to give Myka the opportunity to complain, negotiate or ask Helena to differ the time she won from Myka fair and square (Helena was happy to play dumb for the moment, because the game they were playing now was far more gratifying than the satisfaction born of self-righteousness).

When Myka stopped trying to speak Helena mounted Myka’s thigh and simultaneously slipped her hand between her own thigh and the apex of Myka’s, and her fingers inside her lover’s velvety warmth.

Myka bucked with a moan, pushed into Helena’s hand and threw her head back, mumbling words of approval to her lover. Helena whispered her acceptance in return.

Helena watched Myka, much like she had the first night they had spent together, fall slave to her body’s demands, follow a pattern of movement for a few moments and change it in favour of another. Alter pace and strength and length almost at random, and every time she did so she was more relaxed and more tense at the same time.

That was, until Myka slowed her pace so much, that it was no surprise to Helena that she stopped.

Helena, still mesmerised by how Myka was so unashamedly free with her want, thought that (much like the time before) Myka’s need was sated. So she leaned down, gently pulling out from Myka with a sigh to kiss her.

“If it's okay with you,” Myka spoke softly, coyly, between kisses, “and if my time isn't up yet,” she was searching Helena’s eyes, “I have… Uhm…” she found them, and they were blazing with need and dark with desire and Myka knew that it was _her_ Helena craved, and it took her breath away. But Myka had a request, and she worked up the nerve to ask it, so she closed her eyes so she could follow through.

“You have what?” Helena asked plainly as she kissed Myka again.

“My briefcase,” Myka mumbled, kissing Helena attentively in return. “Green plastic bag.”

Helena paused to look at Myka to confirm her request. “You wish me to retrieve a bag that's in your briefcase?”

Myka chuckled, eyes closed, embarrassed and so ridiculously turned on. _Helena and her way of stitching words together…_ “I wish for you to retrieve the item therein,” she answered, matching Helena’s vernacular, and she opened her eyes briefly. Helena was above her. Her lips hovering above Myka’s like plump, red grapes, dangling, begging Myka to bite into them, and her eyes were every bit curious as they were hungry. Myka felt a blush creep through her cheeks and she closed her eyes again to maintain her resolve, as if her eyelids stopped her courage from escaping. “I wish for you to use it,” Myka all but muttered.

Helena waited a handful of seconds, gave Myka a moment to explain further or recant. But Myka didn't move. She was worrying her bottom lip, cheeks flushed, eyes closed. So Helena acquiesced.

Myka, on her part, couldn't watch. She didn't think Helena would oppose the idea of using an accessory, but Myka had never, _ever_ asked anyone to do _things_ to her, let alone do _things_ to her with _other things_. In her mind, any response from Helena would make her feel silly or needy or demanding.

A part in Myka still couldn't really believe the she’d actually packed up the toy the night before, with the knowledge that she would be spending the night with Helena and it. But from the moment she received Helena’s request to spend another night together, just a few days after their first, all she could think about was adding this flavour to their encounters. For the past few weeks, Myka’s anticipation had grown, nearing its peak that very moment, waiting for Helena to find the toy. And once she found it, for her to bring it to Myka and fuck her with it.

Myka was on the bed, on her back, her eyes still closed, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh where air shifted. She was listening out for Helena: she heard her click open the fastenings of the briefcase, heard her flick open the flap. She heard the muted rustle of the bag as Helena found it at the bottom of her briefcase, and the longer, more audible rustle as she removed it from the object it enveloped.

Then there was silence.

And Myka stopped breathing for a moment.

As her fingers wrapped around the bag in the briefcase, Helena figured out this was a silicone dildo. Unwrapping it revealed its shape: slight arc with two pronounced bumps, one at its tip, one a few inches down the shaft.

She examined the toy, passed it between her fingers, the smooth, warm surface with its two strategically placed ridges. She considered how this particular toy would feel inside her. Inside Myka.

She looked at her, at Myka, naked, waiting for Helena. She'd noticed the goose flesh, the slight tremors in her biceps and abs.

There was nothing about that scene that was really a surprise to Helena. The Myka who was in her bed now was most definitely the kind of lover who would bring toys along, even though the Myka of six months ago wouldn't have.

And yet, the fact this was not something Helena had predicted or expected would occur that night brought a different kind of pleasure to the act. It also brought a smug smile to her lips, smothering self-righteousness, because now she knew the real reason why Myka lost their trivia game.

The next noise Myka heard was Helena switching on the light in the bathroom, then Helena turning the tap on. Then, knowing Helena couldn’t hear her, Myka exhaled the air shed been holding for a long minute in sheer relief.

Given the length of time the tap was on Myka assumed Helena was washing the dildo, and her body tensed and heart rate quickened with the prospect of what was about to unravel.

She heard Helena turn the tap off, then switch the lights off and then silence again.

She then felt Helena’s weight at the top of the bed, by her head.

“This is a lovely surprise,” Helena purred by her ear.

Myka couldn't help the arrogant, salacious smirk that tugged at her lips.

“And you seem to be very pleased with yourself,” Helena enunciated, stretched her body along Myka’s and placed the tip of the toy between her breasts.

Myka gasped through her grin and released a small grunt.

“I've fulfilled half your request,” she dragged the toy slowly, down Myka’s belly. “I've retrieved the object therein.”  

Myka’s abs and glutes tightened and trembled and Helena paused just below Myka’s navel.

“Remind me, darling,” Helena whispered and leaned into Myka, her breasts and belly and pelvis pressing exquisitely into Myka’s naked side. “What was the other half?”

Myka’s breath came out as a laugh, an uncomfortable, needy exhale, because she knew that Helena had cottoned on to the bigger game. Helena knew that Myka lost the bets on purpose, and _this_ was Helena’s payback for having been played. Eyes still shut, Myka thrust her hips gently upwards, grinding them against thin air while biting on her lip, hoping Helena would take pity on her.

Helena’s compassion, it seemed, also had circumstances-dependent settings, and the current circumstances disabled it. “Terribly sorry, darling. I didn't quite get that.”

Myka laughed again, but took a steadying breath. “Use it,” her voice nearly broke, “please.”

Helena bit her own lip to slow the pulse and moisture at the pit of her stomach. Myka was just too delicious like this.

“Use it…” Helena traced the path of the toy a bit lower, but then removed it from Myka altogether when it reached her mons, “How?”

“God damn it, Helena,” Myka hissed.

“God would be of little assistance here,” Helena murmured, “damning or otherwise,” she rubbed the length of the dildo gently against Myka’s outer thigh.

“On me,” Myka whispered through dry lips and thrust her hips again.

“Pardon?” Helena leaned in further and ghosted her lips to Myka’s.

“On me,” Myka wet her lips cleared her throat, “use it on me,” her conviction waned as she felt Helena’s lips looming over hers.

“How shall I use it on you?” Helena looked to where she dragged the toy, down Myka’s leg and over it, so it was now pressing on the inside of Myka’s calf; and then up again, applying more pressure as it passed behind her knee, and slowly, ever so slowly, up all the while, adding a bit more pressure still when she reached between her thighs, encouraging Myka to pull her legs apart.

Myka sighed or moaned or whimpered. “A bit higher,” she begged, “please,” and her body lurched when the toy reached the apex of her thighs, it's surface feeling cool when brushing hot, wet folds.

Although everything about that accessory was familiar to Myka, after all she had had it for more than three years, having someone else hold it against her made it feel entirely new. With her anticipation peaking, Myka started a firm rhythm against the shaft in Helena’s hand.

Helena was not going to relent so quickly. She pulled away ever so slightly, relieving some of the blissful pressure as she dipped her head to kiss Myka, a searing kiss, commandeering the whole of her lover’s body. “Surely you want more than friction,” Helena asked lasciviously and pushed the tip of the toy down, threatening Myka with penetration.

“Oh God,” Myka whimpered again.

“God can't give you want you want,” Helena pressed the shaft down, rubbing its whole length against Myka’s centre, “but I can.”

“Please,” Myka bucked her hips.

“Tell me,” Helena whispered.

“Please, Helena.”

“‘Please Helena’ what?” she applied a bit more pressure and the toy barely entered Myka.

Myka gasped and brought her hand down on top of Helena’s and pushed her pelvis off the bed to have the dildo slip inside her smoothly.

Helena inhaled sharply at the feel of Myka’s strength, the feel of the accessory gliding into her.

“Fuck,” Myka exhaled as she fell back to the bed, the toy rubbing inside her.

Helena hummed her delight and repositioned herself above Myka, to have better leverage. “What was that?” she asked and pushed the phallus in, up to the ridge in its middle.

“Fuck,” Myka’s whisper was harsh and she bucked again.

“‘Please Helena’...” Helena prompted into Myka’s lips and pushed the dildo in, it's middle ridge sliding into Myka’s tight core.

“Please, Helena,” Myka opened her eyes, “fuck me,” and spoke out loud words she'd been only thinking of for the past six months. And the woman above her smiled - not cockily or arrogantly like she had done till then. She smiled with affection and joy and hope with the future of all that could happen next as she began thrusting inside Myka.

Helena started out slowly, savouring every shuddering breath Myka released every time the phallus slipped inside her, echoed it with a shuddering breath of her own. But then Myka’s hips began answering Helena’s movements and before long, Myka was changing the pace, changing technique, and those shattered breaths became shallow pants.

Helena pushed herself up, braced herself against the headboard and looked down at Myka. She was so beautiful in her ruin, in her pleasure. So whole and healthy and unbridled – brown curls slapped against white pillows and stuck with sweat to a pale forehead, lips and cheeks donning a dark pink glow, like an apple ripening in bright sunlight. Myka’s neck and chest were covered in perspiration – no longer a thin, shimmering coat, but tiny pebbles of salty water, glinting in the side light.

_All for me_ , Helena thought. _All for me, ready for the taking, and I’m nowhere near done with her yet_. Helena sunk her teeth deeper into her own bottom lip when her eyes travelled down to Myka’s breasts, rocking gently with their rhythm, tight, dusky nipples at their tops.

“Harder,” Myka uttered through a breath, almost a whisper, and Helena eyes wandered back to her lover’s.

Myka’s eyes were torn open, their green rings bright, the grey of the iris diluted almost completely. And those eyes, had Helena not known better, spoke not only of want and passion and lust; but they also uttered devotion and sincerity.

Helena’s insides clenched. Her heart and her lungs and her stomach squeezed themselves clear of their contents at the sight and sensation before her. Then she felt the distinct pang of her own craving, her own need, making itself more difficult to ignore as her core grew tighter and wetter every time Myka pled Helena went harder, and every time Helena answered her plea.

Myka’s eyes fell shut after a short while, her body forcing her to focus on nothing but the hard physics of the sex she was having. It was carnal and raw and the closest to animalistic that Myka had ever had, and Myka’s body demanded that she felt the woman who is giving her this experience.

She let go of the sheet that her fist scrunched to a ball and fumbled blindly to Helena’s knees, tracing thin lines between them, the tip of her finger just reaching to top of Helena’s sex. It was barely a touch – Helena was not at the right angle for Myka to touch properly, not matter how hard she tried to reach, as far as her taut body allowed her.

But Helena felt the insinuated form of Myka’s fingers near her centre and her hips surged forward to have Myka’s fingers take full form against her with a shaky exhale of Myka’s name. Almost without faltering with her pace inside Myka, Helena let go of the headboard and started her own pace against Myka’s fingers, light as though they felt, they were all she needed to fuel her until Myka came.

Myka needed to see, she needed to see Helena needing her and opened her eyes to see Helena, almost impossibly stretched next to her, one hand supporting her not far from Myka’s shoulder, the other keeping the accessory hard at work and the rest of her body keeping her own want seen to.

_She was so wet_ , the thought registered faintly in Myka’s brain, she had never felt Helena so wet before, and she wondered what was different for Helena. Myka stretched a tad further, reached deeper, to circle Helena’s clit. Helena moaned and trembled, and Myka did as well, and without thinking Myka brought her free hand to her own clit because that’s what her body needed.

Their release was tidal, came in waves. Some crashed their senses, some lapped them gently, but it was relentless in its flow and took long minutes for it to subside.

Myka had never experienced this sort of release before, or, for sake of argument, this sort of sex before. She was completely and utterly spent, but bursting with energy. She wanted to start again, start something else, but her muscles were simply not responding. They had nothing left in them with which to respond. So she laid on her back and looked down, to where Helena’s body was collapsed on hers, and how beautiful their breathing looked from her vantage point.

Helena was spent as well. Toppled on top of and next to Myka, her body was pulsing with the strain of their exchange as well as the pleasure it induced, a daft smile plastered on her face – partially because of the euphoria her orgasm had triggered, but mostly because she was right. And Helena _did_ like it when she was right. Myka Bering _was_ a formidable lover, and she was just a little too smug with her choice to stay at that café so many months ago, even though Myka screamed discomfort. Helena was utterly pleased with her choice to give Myka the benefit of the doubt.

Limp and content, Helena let the shallow and steady rise and fall of Myka’s chest and abdomen (where her eyesight happened to land, and where her arm happened to drape) lull her into a blissful rest.

She woke up an undeterminable amount of time later, on her belly, a presence imminent over her. The familiar touch of familiar lips assuaged errant tendrils of alarm – Myka was tracing the shapes of shoulder blades with light kisses, nuzzling the base of her skull, sweeping the ridges of her shoulders, her biceps; sifting exhaustion from them with gentle, persistent caresses of her lips and cheeks and chin.

A soft moan escaped Helena, accepting her fate at the Myka’s ministrations. She registered a barely audible growl coming from above her, prompting the introduction of fingertips and nails, simultaneously recharging the nerve-endings on her shoulders, her arms, the small of her back, the sides of her breasts.

Then Myka half-laid on top of her, pressed her front to Helena’s back and slipped a toned thigh between Helena’s, skimming her hand over Helena’s side, from hip to breast and back again, coaxing her to pull back, to roll over, asking to access Helena’s front.

And Helena could not refuse. She sighed at the feel of Myka’s fingers grazing a nipple as they continued with their light brush along the length of her body, from Helena’s collarbone to where her abdomen met the top of her thigh, slowing their tickling sweep at her breast, for a fuller, more luxuriating touch.

“May I have you now?” Myka spoke, now that she knew Helena was awake and willing.

_Of course you may_ , Helena’s mind retorted, _I’d be rather disappointed If you didn’t_ ; but she didn’t know how long they had been asleep, she didn’t know how long they’d had left. “What’s the time?”

“Ten thirty,” Myka whispered before taking Helena’s earlobe between her teeth and slipping her fingers lower, pressing them to Helena’s lower abdomen.

That meant Helena had only been asleep less than twenty minutes and the night was still in its infancy. “It that all?” she craned her neck so she could look at Myka, who was wearing a lewd smile trapping her bottom lip in her teeth.

Myka nodded slowly as she brought her hand up and wrapped her palm around Helena’s breast, her thumb grazing soft flesh. Helena’s eyes fell shut and her mouth fell open and her whole body fell listless in Myka’s arms in a gesture so sensual Myka couldn’t stop her pelvis from thrusting gently into Helena’s backside.

Myka continued kissing Helena, lightly, teasing the skin and tendons and muscles of her neck, shoulders and upper back while alternating the fingers with which she brushed or pinched or squeezed her lover’s breast. Helena excitement grew as the minutes ticked by, as Myka introduced harder touches, scrapes, tugs and pulls among the feather-light skims and warm caresses, never doing too much too fast, building Helena up slowly.

Helena reached the pads of her fingers to the base of Myka’s neck, keeping her close. She submitted wholeheartedly to the hypnotising treatment Myka was rendering, all the while growing tighter and wetter where she needed Myka the most. Myka’s movement against her backside was distracting, and while she could have come from what Myka was doing to her breast (and she had, in the past), Myka’s thigh between her legs and Myka’s shallow, rhythmic nudges against her ass reminded her that she actually preferred it if Myka touched her sex, if Myka was inside her.

“I need you,” Helena breathed when Myka’s hand was close to where she was eager for it to be.

“You have me,” Myka answered and pulled her hand back up Helena’s body, returned trained digits to a pebbled nipple, plucking it like a guitar string.

“Myka,” Helena grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand down, “I need you,” but Myka released her hand from Helena’s grip before it reached its destination.

“You have me,” Myka stretched to trail kisses towards Helena’s lips.

Helena turned her head to meet Myka’s lips, to look into her eyes, and gave the curly haired woman an accusatory look.

“You have me, Helena,” Myka whispered and chastely touched her lips to Helena’s, “you need you,” she smiled down on the woman beneath her.

Helena’s eyes widened as if she had just been granted the gift of sight. Myka made perfect sense: Helena tied her own need with her need for Myka as one. Suddenly, it felt the most obvious, yet most exciting thing she could do – separate what her body needed from her _other_ need for Myka, yet have both gratified at the same time.

She pulled Myka down to her, to continue the kiss and released her hand from Myka’s curls. She travelled down Myka’s biceps and gave them a gentle, gratuitous squeeze as her fingers drifted past it on their hasty way down, to touch herself while Myka was touching her.

Myka let go of Helena’s lips as her fingers neared their mark, keen to see what Helena would do, keen to see her body respond. Helena was for Myka, after all, an emissary of sensuality and the harbinger of pleasure. She loved watching Helena in her rapture, and this particular peak, she thought, would be wholly her own.

As she reached her fingers to her sex, Helena touched her tongue to her top lip, held it still as her fingers found their place and their pace. Myka sighed softly, not daring to disrupt Helena. Myka felt Helena’s biceps and triceps and trapezius muscles straining as her own fingers worked her, and as her breaths grew shorter, Helena replaced tongue on upper lip with teeth trapping her bottom lip lightly. All the while, Myka kept her fingers weaving promises at Helena’s breast.

Myka watched Helena’s shut eyelids tighten, watched her frown as her core cramped suddenly, watched her draw a slow and shaky breath as her body relaxed again. She watched and smiled and didn’t stop because Helena wasn’t stopping either.

She watched a bead of sweat roll down the side of Helena’s neck, from behind her ear. She watched it quiver in time with Helena’s movements and dipped her head to lick it from its perch.

Helena moaned a quiet blessing for Myka to keep making use of her lips, and Myka continued worshipping damp hair and skin with lips and tongue, listening to Helena’s breaths and hums.

“Where…” Helena breathed the beginning of a question, but her body wouldn’t let her finish.

Myka purred by her ear, acknowledging Helena had a thought she wished to express.

“Whe…” she started again, this time to be interrupted by a pinch at her nipple that was exquisitely timed with her own press of her clit. She collected herself a handful of seconds later. “The toy…” she whispered breathlessly.

Myka mumbled and slowed her fingers’ dance on Helena’s breast. “I’ll have to stop, though,” she muttered into the crook of Helena’s neck and reluctantly pulled away. “It needs a wa---“

“What are you waiting for?” Helena looked up at Myka, who was surprised and amused and thrilled equally.

“Don’t stop what you’re doing,” Myka let her hand fall from Helena’s warm body, she pulled up and reached for the nightstand behind her, where the dildo was, then turned around to regard Helena. “But don’t…” she mumbled. Helena was in her own world, having her own adventure, eyes shut again, lip trapped between her teeth, probably unaware of Myka. So Myka slowly slinked off the bed and headed towards the bathroom.

“Don’t what?” Helena sighed as Myka was about to turn the corner of the room.

Myka looked at her – the epitome of erotica, a goddess of temptation – one hand between her own legs, arousal seeping from between fingers, glistening; the other raking her hair back, tugging it gently, rivulets of black silk cascading between white knuckles. Sumptuous, darkened lips only slightly agape, allowing torturously seductive breaths to escape Helena and make her pleasure known to whoever cared to listen.

_No human alive can resist this_ , Myka thought and bit her own lip. “Don’t come till I’m back,” her smile widened and she went in the bathroom to wash the dildo.

She’d washed it so many times, this toy, and never like this. Never with its use being acknowledged by anyone else. She always used it in hiding, even in her own home. But then, she was also washing it in preparation of using it on someone other than herself. Her heart picked up its pace and a small smile threaded through her eyes because using her dildo with Helena was a dream come true for Myka.

She shook water from it, shut the light and the door behind her and turned the corner back to the room, to watch Helena on the bed – one hand in her hair, one hand in her sex. _God, she’s amazing_ , Myka thought and took a moment to observe how Helena was touching herself, and for those few seconds Myka swore she could feel Helena’s fingers were touching _her_.

And then words rolled off the burr of Myka’s tongue without being screened by her brain first, because surely it would have stopped them from being said. “Come for me, Helena.”

Before Myka’s brain recognised what she’d said (and it would have then chastised her harshly for it, for sure, if it weren’t stinted by the overwhelming sight, scent and sound of that sensual woman on the bed), Helena shifted her legs slightly and reached her fingers further down, deeper, inside; and her shoulders rolled into the pillows underneath her, and her back arched, and her hips rose, and she moaned Myka’s name (Myka’s brain did recognise _that_ ), and her whole body trembled as she climaxed, and Myka stood at the foot of the bed, with a dry mouth and a wet centre and could hardly believe this was happening.

When Helena’s orgasm faded, when her body relaxed and her breathing settled, Myka climbed on the bed to lay behind her again, wrapping Helena in an embrace. Myka coaxed Helena to turn to her and she kissed her with candour, with admiration, with appreciation for her beauty and sexuality and sensuousness, for her freedom and fearlessness and trust.

Helena needed just that. She hardly ever needed to be reassured during sex, but Myka’s command was something she truly didn’t expect from her. It was stark and blunt and voyeuristic. It was alien to who she knew Myka to be. While enjoyable, Helena felt exposed and more vulnerable than she had prepared to make herself. So being held and kissed and worshipped by Myka tethered her, gave her back her confidence, refuelled her courage and her passion.

“Where were we, then,” she pulled away from Myka so she could push her to her back and straddle her waist, “before you walked off?”

* * *

Myka woke up at 5:45.

Myka always woke up at 5:45, even when she was up half the night with the baby. Myka would wake up and get out of bed at 5:45 even if she was tired beyond human proportion, because she would then force herself to go out for a run, and get breakfast going and unload the dishwasher. And even though half the time she felt she had nothing in her with which to move, she would wake up and get up and get on with it.

So when Myka woke up at 5:45 that morning, she knew there was no going back to sleep for her. She felt tired, or rather, her body felt tired. She got very little sleep the night before, but that didn't matter. In fact, those reasons made her more determined to not go back to sleep, because a stunningly sexy woman was on the other side of the bed, and it must have been at least two and a half hours since that woman came by her hand or her mouth or her thigh or her sex toy, and she didn’t need to leave the hotel until 8:30ish so she had time.

She snuck out of bed for a quick bathroom run where she also prepped her accessory again. She looked in the mirror, studied her reflection, examined errant marks of their passion - small bruises and faint love bites on her belly and waist, some scratches along her arms and down her back. All remnants of some of the best sex she’d ever had, some of which was sex she’d never conceived of having, some of which was sex she never knew she wanted.

Her eidetic memory scanned through the images from the hours that preceded that morning, she catalogued them with sensations, with words, with scents, with sounds. She bit the smile that spread across her face to keep her arousal at bay.

Myka wondered if there would ever come a time when Helena would stop amazing her, if there would ever be a time when being with Helena would be less exciting than this. The smile fell from her lips at the realisation that perfect lovers existed if one only dared to search for them, if one only dared to stop waiting for them to fall into one’s bed, if one only dared to submit and let go of control and preconceptions of sex and intimacy and roles and expectations. And marriage.

Crowning Helena a perfect lover made Helena mean more to Myka, and that didn’t tally with what the explicit understanding she had had with Helena. There were echoes in Myka’s cognition, still, at that moment, that reminded her that _this_ , this affair, was a fiction, an apparition. _This_ wasn’t real. It was _just_ an affair, and it was wrong to have it, and it would end quicker than it started the minute something went sideways.

Those voices used to be louder, but there were mere echoes now. Distant, faded, half-sounds that constantly rang at the back of her mind. And that morning, nearly seven months since she began this affair, she'd become quite adept at using her memory to recall _other_ sounds - loud and soft - that reminded her that the woman in that bed was very _very_ real, and while what they have might not last forever, it had already given Myka so much.

And Myka recognised that she was definitely better off for having known Helena, than not.

She walked back to the bedroom and slipped back into the bed. Helena was still asleep, on her belly, hugging a pillow, facing away from Myka.

A sheet was messily wrapping her like a toga, tucked under her right thigh on one side and under her waist and chest on the other, pinned down by a raised knee.

Myka examined her options. She prowled across the bottom bed, like a leopard examining its prey, and she settled low on Helena’s right, behind her knee, her face aligned with the sleeping woman’s bare thigh.

She started with fingers gently caressing the parts of Helena that were covered by the sheet. She outlined the creases in the cotton, the cliffs and dips it created, a second skin to Helena, and pressed her fingers a little harder to where Helena’s flesh was closest to the sheet, feeling the muscles in her lower back and backside.

Myka then drew her hands lower, pulled the sheet down with her, so she could continue touching Helena. She reached the underside of her ass, and the very top of the back of her thighs.

Helena’s glutes and hamstrings twitched and she murmured in her sleep.

Myka looked up, depraved smile across her lips, and continued administering tender touch lower still, to where the sheet could not reach. At the first touch of fingers to skin she gasped quietly, and Helena did as well, warmth transferring between Myka’s palms and the exposed skin at the back of Helena’s thighs.

While swapping broader brushes of thumbs with lighter caresses of fingers Myka declared to herself the boundaries of how far she would allow herself to go before Helena woke up.

In the past, Helena had been quite responsive and woke up quickly, so nothing explicit was done without consent. This morning, however, Myka was up and alert and eager and wanting, much like she was every morning, only that morning she had a companion with whom she could play out her want.

She wanted to slip her fingers higher, where it was soft and wet, she wanted to make Helena say her name again, say that she wanted her. She wanted to reach her tongue there and taste and penetrate, gently, slowly and drive Helena to another climax. She wanted Helena’s fingers in her hair, she wanted them threaded in her curls, holding her in place.

Even though she wanted all that, she didn’t want to go that far without Helena being awake to acknowledge, to endorse. After all, this was only the second time they’d spent the night together, and Myka wasn’t comfortable (or confident) enough to take Helena when she wasn’t technically conscious.

She decided to up her game, then, to entice the sleeping beauty back to the waking world.

Lips on skin weren't enough either, and Myka was beginning to feel a tinge of frustration mixed with disappointment, that she might not have a partner to play with that morning, after all. So she sighed while slowing her lips, placed both hands on either side of Helena’s ass and pushed herself up from what she had hoped would be the most exhilarating way to start the day.

“Why do you keep walking away from me when I so obviously need you?” a muffled, sleepy groan came from the top of a bed.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“How can I be sleeping when you mercilessly tease me, Myka?” she asked, but hadn’t actually moved.

Myka smiled and lowered herself back to where she was. “I’ll stop teasing, then,” she said, pulled the sheet away from Helena’s body and exposed her.

Helena gasped at the rush of cold air across her skin, at the touch of Myka’s hand, firmly pushing her bent leg further up to fold under her, at the feel of Myka’s nose hinting an approach to her labia, and a tip of a tongue fulfilling that promise. Helena pressed her face to the pillow and moaned, loudly, and then raised her backside to give Myka better access.

Myka did not miss her cue. She brought both hands around to support Helena and dipped her chin lower, shot her tongue further, laving her lover with long, firm strokes between her folds, circling her entrance, plunging inside her and back to the top.

Helena came quickly, grinding her pelvis against Myka and the mattress, but then Myka was gone, and her hands were pulling Helena up and away from the mattress at her hips, and Helena instinctively answered the request to go to her knees.

Without warning or additional foreplay, Myka slipped the dildo along Helena, curve matching curve. Helena pushed back into Myka behind her and moaned again, this time without the pillow to absorb the sound, starting a demanding rhythm against Myka and the shaft, taking it inside her, sighing Myka’s name.

_Perfect_ , was the single thought that rattled in Myka’s empty mind as Helena took pleasure from her, _she’s perfect_ ; then her mouth fell open as Helena changed pace, and Myka changed her angle ever so slightly so she could feel Helena’s momentum against her more acutely. She closed her eyes to feel Helena, to hear her and let that be what took her over the edge as well.

* * *

Myka grumbled through a trail of kisses that ended in the crook of Helena’s neck and Helena hummed a response.

“I’m going to need to leave soon,” Myka looked down at Helena, pouting, a disgruntled child.

“You’ve been saying that for…” Helena reached for her phone on the nightstand, “nearly an hour,” she brought her hand back to the nape of Myka’s neck and pulled her down for another kiss.

“An hour…” Myka whined and buried her face in Helena’s neck. For all her strength to get out of bed at ungodly hours when she had not an ounce of energy in her, she seemed to void of strength altogether when getting out of bed meant stopping touching, stopping the reciprocal chain reaction of orgasms that lasted the past two hours or so.

But if Myka left it any later, she wouldn’t have time to get a quick shower and be presentable, and she wouldn’t make it to the office in time for the goddamn weekly call she and Pete ran with the creative and sales staff. And if she wasn’t presentable or on time, Pete would know. “If I leave it any longer…” she looked at Helena, who was practically glowing in the sunlight.

Helena saw the distress in Myka’s honest, green eyes and smiled softly. She untethered both hands from Myka’s hair and brought them to her cheeks, the pads of her thumbs caressing Myka’s cheekbones gently. “I know, darling.”

Myka placed her forehead against Helena’s and closed her eyes to savour that image, to savour that moment. She wanted to thank Helena for the previous night, for that morning; she wanted to tell her that she was perfect, that she was all Myka had ever wanted. But it all sounded so juvenile and infatuated in her head, so she said nought.

“I might be stealing your line, but thank you,” Helena whispered coyly from behind closed eyes, still caressing Myka’s cheeks. “It’s been longer than I care to remember since I started a day this way. I forgot how glorious it felt.”

Myka chuckled silently and blushed. Helena didn’t see, but she felt Myka’s cheeks round under her fingers as they pulled her smile to existence, and she felt them warming in matter of seconds.

Myka opened her eyes to look at her lover. Her perfect lover. She nodded, then pressed a chaste kiss to Helena’s lips. “I’m glad.”

“Will I see you Thursday?” Helena asked.

Myka nodded again.

“Go, then,” Helena released Myka at once, “before I change my mind and you’re late.”

* * *

At 11:08, Myka was on the way out of the office to the small coffee cart around the corner. She thought she could hear her name, so she stopped and turned around to see Pete running after her, waving his hands frantically.

“Mykes! Mykes!” he caught up to her and she looked at him questioningly, tilting her head to the right and narrowing her eyes at him.

“I’m not getting you your 11-ses Sausage Sandwich, Pete,” she announced, “not till you start paying up.”

“Oh, no,” he caught his breath. “I had my 11-ses, like, a half hour ago. I needed to ask you something.”

Myka gestured towards the coffee cart, and they started walking.

“I just wanted to check everything’s alright with you, partner,” he nudged her gently with his shoulder.

“Why would anything not be alright?” Myka answered with a smile, because, _really, today, so far, exceeded any alright-ness scale_.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “you’re the detail queen.”

Myka quirked a brow, knowing full well a ‘but’ is coming.

“But I have never ever seen you get into that room on a Wednesday morning at one minute to nine. You’re always there way before. In fact, for as long as I can remember, Myka Bering, you are always in the room before I get there.”

“So I was late,” Myka said, despite herself, because she wasn’t late, even. She was _later_ than she usually was and the meeting still started on time. “The _one_ time. That hardly qualifies for the making of a rule,” she didn’t look at Pete while answering. She couldn’t look at Pete while she was answering, because of all the people in the world, she was sure he was the only one she knew would be able to tell that she was having an affair just by looking at her. So instead she looked through her wallet for change and placed her order for coffee.

“I’m not making a rule, dear Watson, I’m just pointing out an exception,” he put on his terrible attempt of a fake British accent. “You were a little distracted, and you look…” he gestured vaguely towards her, tip to toe.

“I look what?” Myka turned to him, a little angry, hand on hip. Pete’s comments about her looks usually bordered on the objectifying and sexist despite his best intentions.

Pete shrugged again, part in fear part under pressure to come up with evidence for his suspicion. “You’re…” he stammered, “relaxed, and…” he took a step back because he knew this is likely to cost his upper arm a mild bruise, “happy, you know? Glow-y.”

Myka knew that Pete moving away meant he thought she would be pissed off at whatever he would say next. But fact of the matter was, she was relaxed and she was happy, probably more than she had been in years. And it’s sweet that Pete noticed, that he’s checking in that everything’s okay, because he knew how difficult things at home were for her.

“Yeah, well,” she said through a clenched jaw, choosing to look angry than to risk Pete observing more of her, asking more questions and then finding out. “I had a good workout this morning,” which, technically, was true. She didn’t lie to Pete (because he would know if she was lying), she was just being economical with the truth.

And for now, and with Pete, that was all she could afford.


	12. XI. (22 weeks previous)

At half past six in the morning Myka completed three rounds of circuit training, and was having a cooldown jog (interrupted by bouts of burpees) with Claudia. It was a bit chilly and a bit grey, but those made perfect weather conditions for a good morning’s effort.

Claudia became Myka’s training partner four and a half years before, when they were teamed at the office for running the Boston Marathon on behalf of the University’s publishers. Myka had always been a solitary runner, and didn’t take too kindly to the idea of having her meditation space infringed upon. But then she got to know Claudia, and Claudia got to know her, and they became fast friends inside and outside of work.

In close succession to Pete, Claudia was Myka’s best friend. And because of her gender, she had always been more sympathetic towards Myka’s issues, with the single exception that was the Myka and Giselle issue. Claudia knew, from having gotten to know both of them, that the Giselle that she knew was not the Giselle that Myka married, but she also knew that Myka and Gi made their marriage work – all problems aside. And having lived around them for nearly five years, Claudia knew first-hand what a loving family they were. She could not count the number of weekends she crashed at theirs just because theirs was a home with no judgement but with a lot of comfort and solace and love.

Claudia knew that things between Myka and Gi were not exactly bouquets of roses and candle-lit romance, but in her mind, what Myka and Gi had was worth fighting for. She knew Myka was fighting that fight, and she did the best she could to help sustain her friend through the battle. She had also noticed, over the four-plus years they trained together, that all the battling was not boding well for Myka. Claudia noticed how much less energy Myka had, how much harder it had been for her to train. She noticed it got pretty bad for Myka  earlier that year, the worst she’d ever seen.

It was, perhaps, because Claudia noticed just how bad things had become for Myka that she signed them up for a Spartan Race. It felt like a super idea at the time. A new challenge, new skills, some distraction, more time out in nature – which she knew Myka loved. But as race day drew near, the worse that idea felt – to the both of them.

Claudia took a firm hand with their training regime, which saw them twice a week, up at the crack of dawn, practicing pulling themselves or a variety of heavy objects across grassy, muddy and rocky terrains, sprinting and rolling up and down hills, jumping over fallen logs and crawling under branches. And each and every such gruelling session would end with a lightly paced run, which they’d stop every so often to practice those damn burpees – surely, a plague unaccounted.

When the last of the burpees was done, they went into the home stretch along Mystic Lake, towards where their cars were parked. It took Claudia nearly five minutes to finally catch up with Myka and catch her breath, enough so she could manage to crack a smile at her training companion.

“I have to say, Myka-O,” she huffed, “you're in top form today.”

Myka smiled lopsidedly towards the significantly shorter woman, who was just a foot or so behind her. “Thank you,” her voice rang clear with a bright smile.

“No, seriously,” Claudia’s activity tracker beeped to alert them to start cool down and she reached for Myka’s arm with limp fingers covered in dirt. “Stop…” she puffed, “Stop running,” she started walking.

Myka took a few more feet to come to a walking pace, and as she did, she looped back so she could walk alongside Claudia.

Claudia looked over at Myka, clad in black lycra and a microfleece body warmer. With her head held high and an aloof smile on her face, she looked like she was having a leisurely stroll in the park, not like she'd just covered five miles’ worth of makeshift obstacles and a three-mile, burpee-riddled, jog.

Criticising her own overly-positive assessment of her partner, Claudia took a better look at Myka, to find she wasn’t as unscathed as her initial glance had suggested: Myka’s cheeks were flushed, fine dirt was trapped in her crows’ feet and under her eyes, sweat and muck clung to the edge of her forehead, her hair was messy and muddied, as were her clothes, particularly at the knees and elbows. But still, she glided on the path like nothing hurt, like today wasn't such an ordeal for her.

Claudia hurt. Her whole body was alerting her to the fact she was nearing her physical limit. Her muscles were twitching, her joints were creaking, her bones radiated pain - all of which culminated in minor limps and a growing need to rub parts of her body that were pulsing with discomfort.

When she started thinking about their past few training sessions, Claudia had observed a trend: Myka had been doing better and better over the past few weeks, whereas for Claudia, the more training demanded of her, the harder it felt for her to achieve, the harder she had to work.

“Seriously,” Claudia breathed out once she felt like she had evened out after the exertion. She was damn curious about the reason behind Myka’s improved performance. Whatever it was, she wanted in on it. “You are taking all this like a piece of athletic cake.”

Myka smiled. Training with Claudia for Spartan was very hard in the beginning. They started training just before her son was born, when Myka’s mental energies had bottomed in an all-time low, which had a severe impact on her physical resilience. Then, having a new-born in her house meant that Myka’s sleeping and eating habits went to hell, and _everything_ felt nigh impossible for her to do, even a twenty-minute run around the block.

But recently, Myka felt it as much as Claudia noticed it, she had a lot more energy; and better energy too. The kind that lasted her much, much longer. The kind that enabled her to step outside of survival mode, and made it possible for Myka to challenge herself. And as far as Myka could tell, there was only one thing that had changed in her life during this time, and that was Helena.

“Are you taking drugs?” Claudia asked without having two ways about it.

Myka laughed.

“You can tell me, there’ll be no judgement,” the younger woman sliced the air decisively with stretched palms. “I've been cutting down on my judgment, I’ll have you know. I can guarantee I am judgement free.”

Myka shook her head as her laugh faded.

“Even if it's food supplements,” Claudia broadened the scope, knowing how specific Myka was with  her definitions. “You're so totally on the ball… I notice things, you know… Your agility. You’re so fast going over and under now. And Your stamina, man. The log lifts have had nothing on you the past three weeks.” she concluded her argument.

“I'm not taking drugs, and the only supplements I'm taking are the ones you’re forcing me to take,” Myka answered with a smile. She loved Claudia. They were so different in many ways, and yet, they were so, so similar. They shared similar values and a common understanding about the world, which was a rare thing for either of them to have found.

“Oh Em Gee, Myka,” Claudia slapped her arm playfully. “You are so getting some!”

Myka couldn't curtail the smile that spread across her lips like an ink drop in water, because some was definitely being had, that's for sure. But Myka knew the bittersweet edge to Claudia’s guesswork. For all their shared values, Claudia’s beliefs about fidelity diverged from Myka’s. Not matter how many times they discussed what made Myka change her mind and heart about fidelity, no matter how many times Myka tried to explain the hopelessness that smothered her when it came to Gi, Claudia continued to cheer for Myka to keep fighting for her wife and her marriage and keep doing what's right, which meant not cheating.

For a long time Myka shared Claudia’s belief. That’s why she fought so hard, for so many years. She waged a war on pretty much every front she could think of to bring her relationship with her wife to a place they both could be happy. She fought with everything she had, until she didn't know what she was fighting for anymore; until she realised that her wife was only fighting because Myka was forcing her to; until it increasingly felt to Myka that she was asking Giselle for something she was unable to give her, which made Myka miserable, which made Giselle miserable in turn. That’s when the whole point of fighting turned nonsensical to Myka, when she realised that the only thing the fighting won them was misery.

And while Myka explained this to Claudia many, many times over the past ten months, Claudia was reluctant to apply her otherwise ever-ready logic and emotional intelligence to Myka’s plight. And whenever Myka felt let down by Claudia’s lack of support, she attributed it to Claudia’s romantic nature. And in Myka’s opinion, what made Claudia such a romantic was her age. As haughty as it sounded in her mind (and Myka hated when she heard herself say things like _‘when I was your age’_ ), when she was Claudia’s age, she was the same. Love, to Myka in her mid-twenties, would conquer all, win the battle, save the day. All she needed to do to fix things was to love Giselle _enough_. She chose Giselle for love and she should stick by her choice, by her promise. And for the first three or so years of the difficult time with Gi, that value and promise held strong and Myka believed that all she needed to do was continue loving Giselle, and Giselle needed to continue loving her, and so long as _that_ was the motivation behind their hard work, the whole thing would get better.

What Claudia was failing to see, perhaps due to her age, was the mounting emotional and mental cost Myka had incurred while waiting for love to heal the wounds of war. That cost had become too great. It cost Myka her strength and patience and her faith in her relationship with Giselle, and to an extent, it cost her her faith in love as a positive force. Three years since her marriage becoming a drab, lacklustre, superficial routine, love felt to Myka as a commitment, a debt, a levy she had to pay, without necessarily ever seeing a return.

And Myka knew that even a judgment-free Claudia would be unlikely to be supportive of her affair with Helena, despite all the good the affair did for her, some of it Claudia had just confessed to witnessing.

“Squee!” Claudia pounced on Myka from behind with a bear hug. “I am _so_ happy you and Gi are on the road to recovery,” she jumped back to the ground and play punched Myka’s upper arm. “What did I tell ya? Huh? What did I tell ya?”

Myka shook her head subtly, dismissing Claudia’s assumption, which Claudia took as Myka’s shyness, her need for privacy.

“Awwww, this is so cute,” she pursed her lips and laced her arm in Myka’s, “you're being all coy about getting in on with your honey…” she took a quick breath, “How do you manage it with the baby in the house?”

Myka sighed, considering whether she had the mental spoons to calculate the pros and cons of telling Claudia. “We're not.”

“You're going out! You devil!” she slapped Myka’s arm again. “Who's your babysitter? I called dibs on babysitting. Is it Pete? Because he and I had an agreement---”

Myka weighed her options. She didn’t want to lie to Claudia. She loved her too much and cared about her too much and lying would destroy those forever. Claudia was also relentless, and she would not be satisfied unless she got a sufficiently thorough explanation. So for all the reasons she could think of, wrong or right, Myka decided that hiding the affair from Claudia was pointless and honesty was due. “We’re not going out,” Myka cut into Claudia’s excitement, “and we’re not getting it on,” was all Myka said, because until that moment there was only one other human being in Myka’s circles (other than Helena) that knew about the affair, and that person was bound by her professional code of ethics to never utter a word of it. The only code that bound Claudia was the unwritten code of her friendship to Myka, and Myka knew that code was about to be exhaustively tested.

Claudia took a few seconds to process Myka’s responses. Not going out with Gi, and not having sex with her, but she was pretty sure she read Myka correctly when sex was first mentioned.

And suddenly pieces of conversations spanning the past year fell into a single place, and Claudia stopped dead in her track. “Myka.”

Myka stopped a few steps after. Evidently, Claudia was just judgement-light, and not quite judgement free, because the way her name fell out of Claudia’s mouth was steeped in it.

“You didn't go through with it, did you?” she asked Myka.

Myka’s shoulders slumped as she turned around. She wasn’t going to lie to Claudia. She urged Claudia to continue walking and take the drama out of the moment, but Claudia didn’t move.

“I did go through with it,” Myka answered to the point and gestured for them to get going again.

Claudia’s jaw dropped with the new knowledge that Myka went on to publish an ad on some website. Not only that, Claudia now had equally new and disturbing knowledge that it yielded some fruit. And she noticed the judgement she thought was gone from her rising within her like a tsunami, and she struggled to keep the raging waters at bay.

Every conversation she ever had with Myka about finding an outlet to Myka’s need for physical intimacy ended in a sort of stalemate: Claudia was adamant that Myka should hold on and stay true, and Myka would use some flowery, literary reference to try and explain to Claudia just how empty or exhausted or rejected or lonely she had felt.

And, yeah, Claudia got it, that it was hard for Myka. But Gi and she were such a great couple. They were Claudia’s model, her proof that marriage was hard work but ultimately worth it.

Or not, as it seemed.

This rocked Claudia to her core, that Myka had given up. That Myka didn’t think her marriage was worth the hard work anymore. It shook Claudia’s very foundation not only because Myka had acted in direct contradiction to one of their shared core beliefs, but also because Claudia made Myka and Gi into the archetypical harmonious relationship she aspired to have when she grew up.

Claudia’s hope was to find the Gi to her Myka, and it was seeing them, with such peace in their relationship, peace that was maintained through truly testing times, that kept her dating, even though she wanted so badly to stop.

With only a tinge of melodrama, Claudia felt like her world was collapsing around her. She stood still, slack jawed and face painted with the blueprint of disbelief, her body frozen, refusing to walk despite Myka’s urging.

“C’mon, Claud,” Myka reached for Claudia’s arm, “I know you don't approve, but it's not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal…” she repeated quietly with an air of dismissal, shirking Myka’s hand. “Not a big deal??” she asked again, louder this time. “It's a pretty big frakkin’ deal, Myka,” she tried to calm herself with controlled breathing, but it did little to help; so she relented and began walking.

They walked in silence for a few moments. Myka was looking down at her feet, guilt and shame rearing their heads from the deep, dark caves into which they were exiled, their siren song getting louder, lulling Myka into a disabled, depressed, comatose state.

Battling to silence this sing were the endorphin high from their workout and the anticipation of feeling Helena’s touch the following evening. Both a proven and effective antidote to the poisonous lullaby.

Claudia was processing. She was thinking about all the conversations she had had with Myka, at least once a week if not twice for the past couple of years, sharing with Myka the loneliness of dating, and how, one after the other, suitors Claudia was paired with by apps and websites amounted to nothing but disappointment. She recalled how every time she would say how much she wanted a good, stable, wholesome relationship, like the one Myka had with Giselle, Myka would sigh heavily and explain to her that she was romanticising the peace in their relationship, that that stability was hiding a hard, uncomfortable truth – a superficial coexistence – which was as lonely as Claudia's life on the dating circuit.

Or something. It was when Myka would say these things that she’d sort of stop listening, because it didn’t make sense. Claudia always heard the words. Myka’s words made sense in her brain, but didn’t match what she’d known of her life with Gi. She always attributed these words to Myka just being grumpy. Myka had always sported a grumpy streak, since the day they met.

But then it hit Claudia that over the past few months, in line with Myka’s energised performance in training, Myka had been significantly less grumpy. There were times that Myka wasn’t grumpy at all.

“How long has this been going on for?” Claudia asked to test her hypothesis coldly, looking out, to the mirror-calm face of Mystic Lake, unable to look at Myka.

“Seven, nearly eight months,” Myka spoke to her feet. She could feel Claudia’s wrath.

Claudia wanted to reiterate Myka’s response with a dramatic shout but decided against it. She shouted it in her mind, instead. _Eight months!_ She was so angry. No. She was disappointed. No. She was both. “Please don't tell me it ‘just happened’,” she marked the trite statement with air quotes and a distinct, disdainful tone.

“It didn't ‘just happen’,” Myka added the air quotes where expected, “it was a very deliberate.”

Claudia was seething. “Do I know her?” _the floozy_ , her mind added, but she knew better than to actually say it out loud. She acknowledged that her love for Myka was taking a beating from her Anger and Disappointment. Good thing that love is so big. Itwas putting up a good fight.

“No,” Myka was quick to respond, but forgot that Helena was actually sort-of high-profile, and some circles considered her to be small-scale (g)litterati. “Maybe. I don't know.”

They walked in silence a little while longer.

“Do you want to know?” Myka prompted, not sure that was the right thing to say or ask. She felt she needed to keep the conversation going, keep Claudia engaged, because that would prove to Claudia that Myka wanted to clear the air;  if not at that moment (because Claudia was too angry), then eventually.

“Yes,” the young woman said, curiosity getting the better of her.

Myka took a breath, but Claudia changed her mind. “No, I don't,” she shook her head, confused, not knowing what to make of any of this. She kept going back to the same question, over and over again. How could Myka, her twin-yet-considerably-older-sister, the one person in the world with whom she was completely and totally aligned, do this? It felt like Myka was cheating on _her_. “I don't know,” the tension in her body dropped because once Anger and Disappointment got tired of trashing her sisterly love for Myka, Hurt settled in her chest, heavy and taxing. “Why are you doing this?” she looked up at the tall, determined woman next to her, who suddenly looked cold, distant and alien. That woman was not _her_ Myka.

Myka sighed heavily. She didn’t feel like going into all those dark emotions again. _Claudia didn’t understand them before, she won’t understand them now._ Maybe, she thought, it was time to try something else. “You remember that guy you were really into? The one who moved with his job? Todd?”

“What does he have to do with this?”

“Well - you tell me - what was it that made you two work so well?”

Claudia grumbled. She had half an inkling where Myka was going with this, and she didn’t want to allow Myka to get her to sympathise. She was too angry. “He really liked me, and I really liked him, and we had a lot in common, and we were all over each other,” she answered despite herself.

“Now, imagine that one day, all you had in common shrunk to your jobs. Suddenly, the only thing you talked about was network switches and software upgrades. And then imagine that all of a sudden he didn't like you anymore ---”

“But Giselle loves you, Myka, she worships you!”

“--- in the same way he used to,” Myka’s tone hardened and she glared at Claudia momentarily, “and he would never, ever show it. At least not in a way that would make you feel good,” Myka’s voice broke. She took a moment to compose herself. “And every time you came to hug him or hold him, let alone kiss or make out or have sex, he shut you down.” Myka felt angry then, upset and hurt. Telling this to Claudia, this time, after all the judgement she piled on her, Myka felt wrongly punished and deeply misunderstood. “How long would you have lasted with this kind of rejection, Claudia?” Myka took a deep breath.

Claudia looked up to catch Myka turn her head away swiftly, with a small, choked grunt that was hiding a sob and an emotion that she never saw Myka express. She then heard Myka exhale sharply as she turned to look forward again while pulling the back of her sleeve angrily against her nose.

Claudia heard all this before in other guises, but she never saw Myka cry about it. She never saw Myka cry about anything. _This isn't fair_ , she thought, _this isn't fair that I have to take sides now_. Claudia knew she was being selfish and judgmental, because she understood, in her head, what Myka was saying, but her heart was too deeply invested in her ideal of a harmonious relationship, and a house in the suburbs and a gorgeous baby to boot. Because for her, given her formative years were completely devoid of family or harmony, she was all too eager to find those in the family that she created for herself. It hurt her that Myka would throw that all away for something so… well… selfish, like getting her rocks off.

Claudia managed to pinpoint why she felt Myka was cheating on her. By starting an affair Myka had reneged on her value of loyalty. One of the things that brought her and Myka so close so fast when they first met was how protective they were of the people they loved, and how – once allied with someone – they would be fierce about their love to them. And it felt wrong that Myka broke the promise she made to Gi, by which way she defaulted on _how_ she loved in general and it felt downright, through-the-looking-glass _wrong_ , and – frankly – Claudia expected _more_ of Myka.

“You know what Gi loves in me now, Claud?” Myka asked defiantly, wiping her tears with the base of her palm.

Claudia looked at Myka, incensed, teeth clenched. She wasn’t in the mood to hear it.

“She loves that I come home every night and do the dishes and the laundry and I cook and clean up and fix whatever stopped working.” Myka spat bitterly. “She loves that I support her and I give her the time and the space to deal with her issues, and process her failures, and contemplate her moods. She loves that I accept that she has good patches and bad patches, even though there are hardly any good patches anymore,” she paused. “She loves that I don’t demand anything from her.”

Myka kicked dirt on the ground in front of her.

“You know what she doesn’t love? She doesn’t love dancing anymore. She used to live for dancing, and she can’t be bothered with it now,” Myka shrugged. “She lost pretty much all interest in anything other than keeping life ticking by. She’s not interested in art. She’s not interested in science, in movies, in theatre. She’s not even interested in TV anymore. She just watches indiscriminate TV – hours of it – because it’s there, but there is no…” Myka was looking for a word, a word that would mean that something reached her wife and affected her in some way, made her react or respond to the world around her.

“I know. I’ve seen it. It’s her head-above-water existence,” Claudia threw back.

“But she doesn’t even realise how deep the water is, Claud,” Myka choked again. “I’m the one holding her above the surface, so she can exist, and I’m…” Myka bit her tongue before she could finish the thought – _drowning_ – because it was just too much for her to admit.

“It’s because she’s depressed, Myka, we agreed this, like, two and a half years ago.”

“ _We_ agreed this, Claudia,” Myka emphasised the pronoun, “You and I, and Irene and I, and Pete… but _not her_. How can you deal with depression if you don’t even acknowledge it?” Myka fought to stop a new round of tears that burned the back of her throat. “You keep saying that she loves me, but truth is, Claud, she loves a tiny piece of me and she’s lost interest in the rest,” Myka took a breath and stretched her back, collecting every bit of strength to finish her train of thought. “This person you say she adores? That’s not who I am. She doesn’t care who I am.”

The more Claudia thought about it the more pissed off she’d grown with Myka. How could she spend all that time fighting for Gi, fighting for their son, having gone through everything they went through to have him, to just throw it all away?

So she tried to put herself in Myka’s shoes, as she often did when they talked, because she would always manage to see something differently to Myka, and that always seemed to give Myka hope.

But letting go of how she felt about Myka and Gi had was hard. They were both great people, they were great together. They were _her_ family, and seeing them break up was like living her early teens all over again.

“I just don’t get it, Myka,” she grumbled sourly.

Myka sighed deeply. “I really hope you never have to,” she said through forced breath, trying to keep her voice from breaking, trying to stop herself from bursting into tears.

They continued walking in silence until they reached their cars. Myka felt defeated and sad. She had never considered she could lose Claudia’s friendship because of her affair with Helena. She, too, felt disappointed in her friend, that she was fine to discuss and agree things hypothetically, but how disastrous was the crash when arbitrary concepts came up against reality.

Despite her disappointment, she was willing to give Claudia the benefit of every doubt. Firstly, the whole affair thing did, sort of, come out with no preparation whatsoever. And also, Myka chided herself in the process, she’d been seeing Helena for a long time now, so there could be a multiplier effect to the shock factor.

Myka unlocked her car, opened the back door and reached for her outer layer, to keep the mud off the seats. Her guilty mind trapped her in a notion that she would now be forced to choose – Claudia or Helena – and that was an impossible choice for Myka to make. Claudia and Helena each excited her and filled her life in such different and vital ways, to the point that living without either was rather difficult to imagine.

And then the part in her that made her publish that ad, the part in her that pushed her through the door of the restaurant that first night, the part of her that made her step towards Helena on the first evening they spent in a hotel and kiss her – _that_ part reminded her gently that all the turmoil she was feeling now, all the hurt, all the sadness, were felt for people who _were not_ her wife.

And the realisation that she didn’t feel those emotions about her wife anymore was like putting her glasses on and having her vision suddenly sharpen. It was realising that she wasn’t losing her wife, because she had already lost her. She swallowed another lump thickly because knew she had felt this way for some time now. Knowing she had already lost Giselle wasn’t new. Articulating it was.

Claudia leaned against the front fender of her own car, watching Myka pull her clothes out of the back seat diligently. Myka was careful she didn’t smear mud or drop a single piece of dirt or flora on the seats; how meticulous she was with not leaving evidence. Claudia knew Myka well enough to know this was just who Myka was, this unbelievably conscientious person who had an eye for every level of detail, effective and efficient and thorough, making sure the things she did never wound up making more work. That was, in part, what made Myka so kickass at anything she did.

But now, knowing she was covering up an affair, she resented those traits because she knew how useful they were in making sure she didn’t get caught.

Did Myka not want to get caught? Claudia wasn’t so sure. Myka’s admission, albeit unpredicted, came very easily. Maybe it was a confession rather than an admission, and Claudia felt that Myka had robbed her of plausible deniability. Claudia was now a co-conspirator, whether she liked it or not.

It reminded her that she was hurt and angry and disappointed. But Myka was her family, and she felt she owed it to Myka to properly consider her perspective again, because maybe she didn’t really give Myka’s agony the appropriate weight, nor had she appropriately considered the depth of her distress.

She felt she owed it to herself as much as she did Myka because she wanted to understand what could make someone like Myka go so rogue. More than anything, she wanted to break the tense silence between them. It was cold and unforgiving and felt a lot like an end, and that scared Claudia.

“What did you mean, ‘I really hope you never have to’?” Claudia wouldn’t let it end. Not like that.

Myka turned around to look at Claudia. She looked at her dumbly for a moment, trying to ascertain the emotion behind Claudia’s tone of voice. She couldn’t tell if Claudia was angry or judgmental or just curious.

“Are you sorry you told me? You taking it back? Do you not want to talk about it anymore? Do you not want to talk about it _with me_ anymore? Because, I suppose, maybe---“

“What I meant was that I hope that you, Claudia Donovan, this amazing, wonderful, jovial person, who has more love and life and wisdom and energy about them than anyone I had ever known, never _ever_ knows what it feels like when the person you thought you would love forever doesn’t care who you are. Can’t make you happy anymore. And you can’t make them happy anymore, and all that’s left between you is a practical, superficial life, that is cold and empty and lonely and sad,” Myka said and was thrilled she could say all that without crying, but the tears were stinging the backs of her eyes. “Sometimes,” she drew a sharp breath and looked up into the dull skies to push the tears back, “sometimes, when we have Freaky Friday conversations, I wish we could Freaky Friday so you could feel how this… how this _vacuum_ feels,” she bit hard on her lip. “But I love you too much, Claud. I don’t ever want you to feel this. You don’t deserve to feel this.”

The soft smile that came to Claudia’s lips when Myka used ‘Freaky Friday’ as a verb (a clear and distinct bad influence she exerted) faded far too quickly at the sensation Myka drew by using the words ‘cold’ _and_ ‘empty’ _and_ ‘lonely’ _and_ ‘vacuum’. She imagined Myka was Major Tom in Space Oddity, floating in her tin can, thinking ground control had a plan and everything was okay, even though it wasn’t. But it occurred to her that Major Tom had his wife and their love to keep him company. And based on what Myka had been saying, for the past however-many months, she didn’t.

And now, between the hurt, the disappointment and the anger, Claudia could feel Myka’s sadness, her loneliness; and tears clung to the edges of her eyes as well.

_I wonder if she even has Ground Control_ , Claudia thought, knowing that she wasn’t it. The conversation they just had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t understand Myka’s tin can at all. _Maybe I should be her Ground Control_ , she contemplated. _Maybe her lover is_.

“I’m sorry,” Myka said with sad eyes that sought forgiveness. “I’m sorry tha—“

Claudia shook her head. “I’m sorry too, Myka,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand how bad it’s been for you. I mean, I’m not sure that I understand it, really, now, but I know I’m closer than I had been,” she paused. “I thought whatever was happening was just a hiccup that people have in their relationships. That it’s just a rough patch and that you’d get past it because you love each other and you’re a fighter, Myka, you never give up. I didn’t realise…” She thought about _cold_ and _empty_ and _lonely_ and _vacuum_ again and a shiver ran down her spine. “I don’t think I wanted to understand how much you were hurting.”

Myka’s lips curved into the smallest of smiles, because that was the most affirmation she had ever had from Claudia, and for the first time since they cracked the lid of this particular Pandora’s box, it felt like the air between them _could_ be cleared.

“I’m also sorry that I can’t understand this. I’m sorry that I’m angry with you. I never thought you could do something like this,” Claudia was welling up with tears of anger and anguish. “A part of me feels like I don’t know who you are.”

Myka nodded and bit her lips again, futilely, because tears just fell from her eyes as well, and she knew it would take time and effort (and possibly a fight) to make sure she didn’t lose Claudia. But it was a fight she was willing to put up.

Claudia took three steps forward, to bridge the ravine that opened between them, and hugged Myka. Myka hugged her back, held on to her friend tightly, knowing how fragile friendships can be.

“I love you, though, I still love you,” Claudia barked through her tears into Myka’s shoulder while squeezing the tall woman in time with her words, “no affair and no trollop will come between us, man,” she let go of Myka. “I just need to process this. I think I can get it now, and I just need to process this,” she kept her hands at the top of Myka’s arms and gave them a squeeze.

Myka nodded with a grateful, teary smile. “Sure,” she said, “whatever you need,” and it hurt her that Claudia was stepping away, and it hurt her more to know that if Gi stepped away, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

“And goddamnit, maybe I need to start seeing your woman too if these are the biceps I’ll get from it,” Claudia quipped through a crooked smile in an attempt to lighten the mood, and Myka exhaled a relieved, uncomfortable laugh, because that was a sign Claudia started to deal with it all.

* * *

The next evening, while kissing Helena fiercely and being kissed equally fiercely in return, Claudia’s words of doubt and betrayal echoed through Myka, accompanied by a cliché chorus of “ _how can something that feels so good be so bad?_ ”

She held Helena’s naked body to hers and kissed her way down the slope of her neck, and those words, Claudia’s words, ‘ _Your Woman_ ’, slowly dripped into her subconscious, dripped in an ever increasing pace, until the cliché chorus was all but drowned, and Myka’s lips were in the valley between Helena’s breasts, and as she inched her mouth to suckle on a soft, supple mound, she looked up to see Helena lose herself, arch her back, award herself to Myka’s mouth, chant her name with faint moans and gentle gasps, and right that second, Helena _was_ Myka’s woman.

It didn’t matter that Helena was married; it didn’t matter that Myka was married. It didn’t matter that there was nothing to keep either of them from finding someone else to fuck on evenings they weren’t seeing each other.

None of it mattered because there was at least one day every week that Helena was Myka’s, and Myka was Helena’s, and there was nothing wrong about it at all.

It was so absolutely, fucking _right_.


	13. XII. (15 weeks previous)

Helena detested New Haven, Connecticut. Firstly, it was an Ivy League college town that was flooded with the kind of snooty privilege to which her familial heritage was linked. It was also periodically overrun by what Helena called Pseudo-Studential Tourism, which filled the town with anxious parents and their eager teenage offspring, each with very different motives for being there. These made for a city that was geared towards a specific target audience, a fact that Helena found sad and dull.

Secondly (and possibly partially because of the above), New Haven could never live up to what it came to replace. The meetings Helena held in New Haven on a bi-weekly basis used to be meetings she held in New York City. But budgets and business plans both saw the hub of the magazines she edited and printed wandering north, into the periphery.

Lastly (a combination of the two), Helena had already spent two years meeting people in New Haven. In those two years she had been to every bar, restaurant, hotel and venue, mainstream and artisan, once, if not twice. Helena had exhausted the city’s potential, and she was bored with it.

Or she was, until recently. Until eleven weeks ago, to be exact, when she and Myka found out that they both attended New Haven for work on a regular basis – Helena for meeting her team, and Myka for meeting hers.

The first time they failed to coordinate travel arrangements, which made for an awkward encounter given the distance between their hotels and overrunning meetings. So the time after that, they arranged to stay at the same hotel and ensured they shared a free evening.

Myka, who frequented New Haven for two days every month, used to use New Haven as a quiet escape from her draining home routine. Over the past couple of months, however, she developed a fondness for the town that until that moment, only held a dreary, corporate association for her. Over the past two months, the single night she spent in the city was anything but draining or dreary. Once a month she and Helena could spend the night together, and those nights were glorious.

Myka was eager to get back to her hotel at the end of the day because she knew Helena would be waiting. Pete made fun of her eagerness to get back to her room and consort with her books, as usual. That used to be the case, until Helena.

_If only he knew_ , Myka thought to herself while bidding the rest of her team her goodbyes for the day before rushing to the Omni New Haven, the hotel where they both stayed in separate rooms.

She arrived at the reception desk just after 5:30, and after giving her her room key, the concierge handed her a long, brown envelope. “This was left for you about an hour ago by another guest,” was the comment.

Myka thanked the heavens that this was a busy hotel and that staff turnover was as high as it was, because she was quite sure that if someone actually paid attention, they would have noticed by now that once a month a brown envelope with a room key was left at the desk from one guest to another.

She smiled a small, polite smile and thanked the young man, then headed towards the elevators. She stopped in a darkened corridor, away from prying eyes, leaned against the wall and opened the envelope. The plain, white magnetic card had a Post It stuck to it:

‘1609 @ 6:30.

Time to pay back what you owe me.’

Myka bit down on her lip and pushed herself off the wall. As she continued her way to the elevator and up and on to her own room on the sixth floor, she contemplated what was it she owed Helena. Was it the time before last they met, when they swapped preferences for the evening and she wouldn’t let Helena come? Was it the time before last they had met in this hotel, when Helena asked Myka to dominate and Myka may have got carried away with the game? Was it the first time they played with pain? Was it the second? Was it their affair – all of it – as Helena was the one who worked to untether Myka from the constraints of her bourgeois, humdrum practice of sex, and now Helena fancied claiming her fee?

By the time Myka had unlocked the door to her room and placed her suitcase on the bed, she felt a thin film of perspiration coating her chest, a reasonable accompaniment to her quickened heartbeat and growing arousal.

Whatever it was Helena was about to collect, Myka was going to give up readily.

Before fully submitting to the evening ahead, Myka answered a few urgent emails and checked in with her partner: she received a full report of food consumed and passed, diapers and total nap times from her partner, and she had a quick good night video chat with their son.

Just before switching Do Not Disturb mode on, she got a text from Claudia:

‘I’ve been working really hard at it, M, and I think I get it. I do. But I can’t stop the judgey yet and I’m sorry. I’m still angry and sad that my ideal family is broken. I’m still trying to deal with that, and I know it gets in the way of really being there for you. And I’m sorry about that too. Just remember that I love you, big sis, even though I’m not showing it very well. And I want you to be happy, even when I’m too angry to say it. You deserve to be happy, and I hope that this makes you happy. Also, don’t forget Friday, 6am, by the lake.’

Myka smiled a sad smile. She wasn’t prepared for this, not today. She stared at the screen for long minutes, her fingers hovering over the virtual keys. This was the first time since their conversation by the lake that Claudia brought up the subject. Myka’s mind was bringing up details of their conversation by the lake, of their training sessions since, and how odd they had been, going on as normal, as if Claudia knew nothing. Odd as they were, Myka decided to say nothing and not push Claudia for a while. It was an extremely difficult decision to execute, but it had turned out to be the right thing to do.

She understood why Claudia was conflicted. After all, Myka was conflicted too. But Myka read past the conflict and felt the ringing affirmation in Claudia’s words, affirmation she feared she would never get from her friend. Only after having read it for the 30th time did she realise how much she’d craved it.

‘Thank you, Claud. You have no idea how much this means to me. Really. Big love back. See you Friday, M.’

Her thumb hovered over the send button for a few extra seconds before she let the text go into the ether. She waited for another minute, staring at the two messages that took up the whole of the phone’s screen before switching it to a mode that would only make it ring in dire circumstances.

At 6:20, Myka changed her suit’s pants to the skirt that matched the jacket, fixed her hair and her shoes, placed her phone in one jacket pocket and her room key in the other, grabbed the card with the Post It and walked out of her room.

At 6:30 she used the key Helena left her to enter Helena’s room. Helena’s room was a small suite which made it considerably bigger than Myka’s room, with a small seating area separate to the bedroom, and a considerably larger and much nicer bathroom.

Myka walked in and assessed the space. This was the second time she had ventured from a commoner’s floor to the sixteenth, and the second time she had been in that suite. The parlour was dark, but the light in the bathroom was on, which led Myka to guess that Helena was there, even though the room was silent. Myka stepped inside gingerly, and acknowledged other details: Helena’s suit was hanging neatly outside the closet, her briefcase was tucked by the desk, the desk itself was completely clear – it had nothing on it. Not even hotel-branded paraphernalia. Helena, however, was nowhere to be seen.

“The desk,” Helena’s voice came low and commanding from behind her, “face the wall and place your hands on it,” she spoke and placed the bathrobe around her, tying its belt loosely enough for it to fall undone at her will or that of her lover’s.

Myka didn’t need to see Helena. She needed to feel her. And in order to feel her, she needed to do as she was told. She needed to pay what she owed. She walked to the desk and placed both her palms on its cool surface, her back turned to the room, turned to where Helena was likely to have been.

Helena didn’t linger and approached Myka, reaching the confident fingers of her right hand to the outside of Myka’s thigh, where the hem of her skirt fell trimly. Her touch firmed around soft flesh and her thumb glided underneath the synthetic fabric and reached the sensitive skin of Myka’s inner thigh.

Myka, who was wondering whether the desk was cleared on purpose following Helena’s request, stopped thinking altogether and moaned silently as Helena’s touch heated her skin, heated her bloodstream, heated her core and her mind and her centre. She couldn’t even think about which game it was they were playing so that she may respond appropriately, because Helena was pushing her skirt up and her underwear aside and her legs apart, and _oh, god, I missed her doing this_.

She felt a pang of need shoot from her chest to her centre when Helena’s left hand joined the task on her other thigh. Helena was dragging her nails and the grey, dull material up towards and over Myka’s backside until it rested above it. Then her hands flowed down again, between her legs to spread her farther apart.

Myka bit down hard on her bottom lip to silence a guttural, wanton moan that came from deep within her. She tightened the grip of her teeth to keep herself from moaning too loudly (she was too self-conscious in hotel rooms, having overheard impassioned couples in the past) and for the sharp pain that complemented the silken touch that was priming her.

Helena loved to feel Myka this way, so eager and so willing even though she had no idea what was to come. Trust, she had learned over the years she had kept lovers, was as sexy as a feisty conversation, especially when that trust extended to sex.

And Myka trusted her; she had known that since they first met. But Myka’s slight lean forward which opened Myka to her showed her just _how much_ Myka trusted Helena in that very instant, trusted Helena to enter her, with _so_ little preamble.

Helena purred and stepped forward, sliding her hands to the front of Myka’s thighs and between them, and Myka gasped and jerked at the feel of Helena: Helena’s nimble fingers skimming her labia and clit, spreading arousal through her, and Helena’s dildo pressing against her backside in slow, shallow thrusts.

“Oh, God,” Myka let slip loudly, and to hell with being overheard. It was clear to her what payment Helena was collecting, and the thought of being subjected to the same treatment she subjected Helena not three weeks previous ignited her insides – an errant flame licking at spilled gasoline.

Helena leaned backwards slightly, leaving one hand between Myka’s legs. She used the other to let loose the robe, exposing her toned abdomen that sloped roundly down towards where her appendage was proudly jutting out, its other end inside of her.

Leaning backwards did not only deprive Myka of blissful pressure, but also Helena as the movement of the phallus against Myka moved it inside her, rubbed her with the most heavenly friction.

But the reward, she believed, was worth the sacrifice of temporary loss of pleasure. Myka knew it too, Helena smiled to herself, because Myka adjusted her stance between the desk and Helena to give her mistress room – room to shift the dildo from back to in between, to slip it between her folds and rub it gently until it was coated with lubricious arousal, until sliding it into her – all the way in – was smooth and effortless.

Helena was right. The friction at the other end of the toy, inside her, was intense and she just had to test the sensation with which she would be granted when she pulled out from Myka. She knew what Myka would be feeling, as she had been on the receiving end of this toy three weeks previous. She had – at the time – hoped to experience it this way as well, but Myka didn’t let her, and now, she thought, she could understand why.

Fucking a lover with a strap-on always rewarded Helena with a different sense of satisfaction to when she pleasured them with her fingers or mouth. It might have been due to the dull pressure a strap-on would place on her clit or pubic bone. It might also have been due to the fact she could see and feel her lovers from a different angle with a strap-on, have better access to their bodies with both her hands, or her mouth, or any combination thereof.

But _this_ … _heavens above may fall around me and I wouldn’t know it_ , she though, _this_ was an addiction to pleasure, because when she moved inside Myka, the dildo moved inside her and _it must be a sin to have so much.._.

Helena was already addicted to the sensations, to the sounds, to fucking Myka from behind and feeling it inside her, to the rhythmic gasps and half-uttered encouragements from Myka, and she wanted more, she wanted to come (and she did) so she could last longer the second time, then the third and the fourth and the fifth --- until she was certain this was how they wound up there, that evening, with Myka indebted to Helena, and Helena having every intention to collect.

* * *

Myka was collapsed on the bed, Helena behind her, dragging the backs of her fingernails up Myka’s body. The dull sensation was lulling Myka into a hypnotic state that reminded her of three and some months ago, the second night she spent with Helena, with her own toy, and how she thought _that sex_ was raw and primal.

A low chuckle escaped her at that thought and at the sensation of being tickled or scratched, and just how much she wished Helena would scratch her _properly_ again, like she did a few weeks ago. And Myka chuckled again at the thought that she finally knew what rough sex was like and she _loved_ it; that she finally knew what it was like to fuck and be fucked to submission and she _loved_ that too.

She loved that she could feel so wrecked yet so unbelievably alive.

She loved that sex could be so simple yet demanding; that it could be so reactive yet strategic. She loved that she was having it and that it gave her back her life force or Qi or the part of her soul she thought had died along with Gi’s libido and her sense of humour and her sense of fun and her sense of adventure.

She recalled Claudia’s text then, how it ended, that Myka deserved to be happy and that Claudia hoped that _this_ made her happy.

Could this be it, then? Could this be what brought Myka back her happiness? After years of rejections, of waiting for her partner to get past whatever it was she was dealing with, after years of trying to help her partner only to find that she didn’t want to be helped, after years of trying to make them better, and then years of trying to make sense of what they meant for each other… After years of loneliness and exhausting, thankless hard, emotional work - could this really be all Myka needed to be happy?

Helena’s lips on the small of her back pulled her back to the room, and she sighed at the feel of teeth grazing flesh, to be soothed by lips and tongue.

“Welcome back,” Helena murmured and took another patch of Myka’s skin between her teeth.

“Have I been away?” Myka turned over and pulled Helena up to her, ran her hands up Helena’s sides.

Helena closed her eyes and shuddered at the soft, slow caress. “I can tell when your mind wanders,” she said softly and took Myka’s lips with hers.

Myka pulled back and looked at her lover: eyes closed, lips soft and pink and parted, anticipating an encore; and realised that there was a certain level of emotional intelligence that one had to have in order to be a great lover, and Helena had it in spades. Helena could read verbal and non-verbal cues like no one else she’d known. She had an uncanny ability to pick out, through the tiniest responses in muscles and changes in breath patterns, how well something was working. She was constantly tuned to how tuned someone else was, and it just so happened that Helena’s sensors were focussed on Myka.

“I’m sorry,” Myka said with a shy smile.

Helena’s brown eyes opened and Myka stopped breathing for a moment, when she felt the fire they beamed. “Never say ‘sorry’ to me,” Helena ordered and touched her thumb to Myka’s chin.

“Okay,” Myka answered in a mocking tone, as if it were that simple to stop apologising, because for Myka, apologising was a deeply embedded piece of programming. ‘Sorry’ was probably the adjective she used most frequently in all the languages she knew, so simply removing it from her vocabulary was not a simple feat. Suggesting that she apologised as frequently as she pushed breath out of her mouth would be a gross over-dramatization, but a fair allegory of the truth, and Myka was well aware of it.

Helena smiled incredulously and closed her eyes.

They were facing each other, under the covers, just holding – Helena cradling Myka’s neck, and Myka cradling Helena’s waist – a kiss frozen mid-approach hung between them as Myka’s mind unravelled Helena’s request.

The very idea that ‘Sorry’ can be removed from one’s daily accessed vocabulary bore further consideration, so much so, that it took up all of Myka’s brain power for a handful of seconds. _This_ … Myka thought, _this notion that there is no need to say ‘sorry’ is ground breaking_ , she concluded eventually. How wonderful and easy and different it would be if Myka didn’t feel she had to constantly apologise. With Pete, it was whenever she _needed_ to go out for a drink so badly she would just say she needed one, and then had to apologise because Pete was in recovery; with Sally, her second in command, it was whenever Myka talked about the hardships of parenting a young child, and then had to apologise because Sally has been trying for a baby for years, unsuccessfully.

With other colleagues Myka had to apologise to maintain her humble façade, to manage her being perceived as a condescending know-it-all. She had to apologise even though she _was_ significantly smarter and more able than the vast majority of her peers and superiors. Truthfully, she didn’t really feel she owed anyone an apology for being who she was. But she learned that apologising made people sympathetic, which meant they then tolerated (if not liked) her presence, and as a girl of six, when being lonely kinda sucked, it had made life better. As she got older, and being liked occupied her less, and being alone didn’t bother her as much. But apologising made her approachable to her colleagues, and that wound up positively benefitting the team’s overall performance. So she took one for the team.

Apologising was so pervasive in Myka’s behaviour, in fact, that she realised she had no idea how to make it stop.

Claudia used to be the one person she apologised least to, but since the other week, since telling Claudia about Helena, Myka’s entire being dripped apologies in Claudia’s presence, without even uttering a word of it.

That only left accounting for the proportion of Myka’s apologies that belonged to Giselle.

Myka sighed with the weight of the apologies she had dealt her partner during the decade-plus they shared together. She then stopped breathing for a moment, constricted by the weight of unspoken apologies, the ones she forced herself to not speak over the past five years.

With Giselle, Myka had to learn to _stop_ apologising for the things that were not Myka’s to apologise for, and then had to learn to stop acting out her unspoken apologies. Myka was so driven by the guilt of making them both miserable, and she would overcompensate by doing more around the house, more for their son, more for Gi. In Myka’s guilt-addled, apologetic mind, doing things for her partner meant that she loved her, and for a long time loving her partner was the strategy for getting them through their rough patches.

But then Myka realised that love on its own wasn’t the answer, and she began to observe more precisely the things for which she was responsible, and the things for which she was not. And it came to pass, with a lot of practice and support from Irene, that whenever something happened that was not Myka’s responsibility, Myka would not say ‘sorry’. Instead, Myka would purposefully gulp, swallow drink or saliva, and each of those weighed like a hundred other apologies.

And just by force of thinking of the choking sensation that accompanied every single one of Giselle’s unspoken apologies, Myka’s body stiffened.

“What is it?” Helena asked and combed the soft hair at the nape of Myka’s neck, soothing her.

Myka took a deep breath to release the clenching sensation that bound her midriff. Helena was always so relaxed when they were together, Myka wondered if Helena had ever felt the way she did that moment, like the potential consequences of their encounters were the unyielding mass of pillars of concrete, squeezing her life from her. Myka wondered if Helena had ever felt this way – not just with her, but with any of her other lovers: had she ever felt like the weight of the outcomes of her affairs parched other relationships in her life.

“Who knows about this?” Myka asked after a long pause, contemplating how to approach the topic.

Helena looked at her inquisitively, begging Myka to indulge her with more details.

“I mean, us,” Myka said and hated it the minute she said it, because it sounded relationship-y and needy. “I mean, _me_ ,” she stuttered in an attempt to correct herself only to make it sound even worse. Myka scrunched her face and exhaled in defeat.

Helena chuckled at the look of a flustered Myka. It was adorable to watch her getting tongue-tied. It made Myka so flawed, so real, so beautiful – that she could be so confident one moment; that she could command Helena's mind and body and soul through to the highest peaks and the greatest releases, and still be _so_ awkward. “My husband knows. He knows of the affair, naturally. He knows about you, specifically. Does he know about _us_?” Helena pondered aloud, emphasising the pronoun.

Myka drew her eyebrows together. Helena had obviously found three _different_ questions in what Myka had intended to be the one question: _this_ , meaning the affair; _her_ , meaning Myka; and _them_ , meaning what they have, which was - apparently - different to the affair.

“I think he knows about us, but I'm not sure I explicitly told him. I think he has been drawing his own conclusions based on conversations we had,” Helena added.

“You talk to him about…” Myka failed to choose the pronoun that would specify which aspect of their involvement Helena was discussing with her husband – _this_ , _me_ or _us_.

“I do,” Helena answered, almost despite herself, because in her experience these conversations rarely amounted to good things. She was also a tad wary of what Myka would make of her definitions of ‘this’ and ‘us’, if at all, because she wasn't sure she was ready to discuss with Myka how different the affair, as a transaction, felt to what she shared with Myka, as an emotion. Helena was hardly ready to admit it to herself.

“I know you said you have this agreement with him,” Myka enquired further, mostly because she couldn't possibly imagine this type of dialogue happening with Giselle, or between any other couple she knew, including her own parents (and _that_ thought made her cringe), “I suppose it’s just hard for me to think of a single couple I know that would be having these types of conversations as a matter of course.”

“I think it’s because we both had affairs prior to having our agreement, and we knew the effect secret affairs had on our relationship. The agreement we have – having affairs but those not being secretive – is, in fact, how we keep our marriage alive. So, really, my agreement with my husband, and the conversation we have as part of it, are means to an end,” she answered factually, because that's simply how things were with Wolly.

“And It never made things awkward between you?”

_There it is_ , Helena found the metaphorical thorn in Myka’s paw, the reason for her bringing all this up. Myka had told someone about _this_ , or _her_ , or _them_ , and it did not go down well. As consequence, Myka’s conscience was tormenting her. “It is when we don't talk about our affairs that things get awkward,” Helena answered, and decided to supplement with additional information, which she assumed was the nexus of Myka’s questions. “My brother was never as accommodating as Wolly is, though,” she volunteered. “Still isn't. He's very conservative with his views of marriage and constantly accuses me of bringing shame to our family name.”

Myka smiled meekly. That sort of sounded like Claudia. Not quite as harsh, but along the same vein.

It was Helena’s turn to be Myka’s confessor. “I’m assuming you experienced some backlash?”

Myka hummed her agreement thoughtfully.

“A sibling? A friend?” Helena asked.

“Both,” Myka chuckled, “sort of. She's a really good friend, but we sort of have a sisterly friendship.”

Helena nodded, still soothing Myka with the pads of her fingers at the back of her neck.

“She can't believe that I could do this, that I could cheat…” Myka started but stopped because suddenly talking about the affair with Helena felt strange and awkward. It made her feel like she was the biggest asshole on earth, a true mastermind villain for doing this to Giselle, her partner who she loved and was clearly depressed. At the same time, however, Myka felt bad for belittling Helena, reducing her place in Myka’s life to _some-woman-with-whom-she-cheats-on-her-wife_. This thought scared Myka twice – once because of how this may have hurt Helena, and twice because Myka could not _not_ admit to herself that Helena meant more to her than sex, than the affair.

Helena was silent, giving Myka the time to think and talk, to take this off her chest, because Helena could feel the affect this was having on Myka. And, yes, while these types of emotions were not something Helena would often entertain with her lovers, she was worried about Myka. She felt her pain and she wanted to help. And the only reason she wanted to help Myka was because of her own emotional puzzle, one she had never before experienced with a lover.

Myka, who was trying to think of what to say that did not involve an apology, realised that the silence had become too long to be comfortable. She began unravelling the situation, attempting to do some damage control: she began picking on her choice of words and how Helena might have interpreted them. She was thinking that while what she was doing with Helena was cheating on Gi, she knew how much better she had been coping at with Gi at home when she saw Helena. She could feel it with Gi, too, things are easier between them since Helena. She was thinking that, yes, while illicit when regarded from a traditionalist perspective, what Myka had with Helena was true and honest and heartfelt. It was mutually beneficent – neither Helena nor Myka were hard done by. They both got what they bargained for.

That was a hard conclusion to reach on top of her admission that Helena meant more to her than sex, because it also felt to Myka like she was making a declaration of fidelity to Helena, like there was an _us_ in the _this_. It determined that the _us_ embodied a meaning deeper, and more emotional and more intimate than simple booty calls.

More importantly, Myka suddenly felt the urge to say something to Helena, to explain to her everything that her mind had just processed, that _this_ was not just cheating-on-her-wife for her, that Helena meant more to her than a physical substitute to the intimacy and the sex she no longer had in her marriage.

But every sentence she started putting together had that abominable adjective, ‘ _sorry’_ , in it, and she wasn’t allowed to say it, and she couldn’t find a way to rephrase her statements for all her mastery of the English language.

The harder she tried to come up with a way to apologise to Helena without apologising, her quicker her mind distilled her conclusion to a single word, a single emotion, neither of which Myka was ready to hear, speak or feel. So her jaws clenched tighter, and her body turned rigid, and her breath was catching because she had just realised that she loved Helena, that she wanted to say it but didn’t know how, without it potentially ruining what they had.

Helena watched Myka’s eyes well up, knowing there was something raging within her, she watched Myka close her eyes and take one deep breath after another to calm that storm. Helena felt her heart swell at the sight of this perfectly imperfect woman in her arms, and with her fingers still at the nape of Myka’s neck, she leaned forward and kissed Myka modestly, lovingly.

That kiss had none of the heat and passion that infused their kisses earlier that evening. There was no game, no experimentation, no riling, no build-up, no quid-pro-quo, no tit for tat.

That kiss was the first of its kind Myka and Helena had shared, because it spoke the word and emotion neither was willing to say to herself, let alone the other. It was a kiss of comfort, of solace, of compassion, of acceptance.

It was a kiss of all the things their love was, without calling it by its name.


	14. XIII. (14 weeks previous)

It was Tuesday. Myka had just got out of an editorial meeting where the schedule for publications for the coming six months was agreed. It was long and tedious and challenging, but the outcome was superb, and Myka felt satisfied for having achieved what she set out to achieve.

Such was the accomplishment, that she was going to go out for lunch with Pete and have a proper break from work, something Myka rarely did, especially on a Tuesday, when she left the office a little early to see Irene.

She went back to her desk to check emails and messages, and as she was packing up, waving to Pete who was walking towards her cubicle, her phone buzzed.

‘Are you free for the next two hours? My schedule opened up.’

There was no need for the number to be identified, there was no need for the sender to sign their name. Myka knew who this was, Myka knew the intent behind the message.

But it was Tuesday, lunchtime. They never met on a Tuesday. They never met during daytime, let alone working hours. This planted twin seeds in Myka. That of excitement and that of its dark sibling, uncertainty. Given how their previous encounter had gone – from heated, unbridled, animalistic passion to what felt to Myka as a deep, vulnerable moment which they never resolved – Myka was suddenly rather unsure of the true intent behind the message, the first request of its kind.

Were things getting too claustrophobic for Helena? Were they getting claustrophobic for her? Yes, at the time, that emotion and that kiss felt right and honest and true and the sex that followed felt inherently different to the sex they had before (and still breath-taking)… but was it all too much? Was it more than Myka had wanted from their affair? Was it more than Helena wanted? The questions cascaded in Myka’s mind faster than she could process. There were simply too many unknowns.

Only one way to find out.

She contemplated texting back, but Pete was upon her, and a talk would clarify things much more quickly.

“Give me two minutes,” Myka whispered to Pete, “I just got a really weird text from a college friend…” she spoke slowly, weighing her words, Studying Pete’s expression as she did, looking for signs of disbelief or suspicion.

She took his raised eyebrows as consent, rather than the surprise they represented, and rushed to a nearby empty meeting room to place the call.

“Sure,” Pete answered to no-one, shrugged and plopped himself down in Myka’s chair, jacket in hand. “I didn’t even know you had friends,” he continued with the mild disappointment that no one will hear his joke, and that he wouldn’t get to hear Myka talking to a friend he didn’t know she had, “other than Claud and me,” he muttered to himself.

Myka, already out of earshot, was listening out for the soft thud-and-click that announced the closure and latching of the meeting room’s door. She held her phone and looked intently at its screen, waiting for it to regain signal, and she dialled.

“Hello, darling,” Helena answered the call.

“Hey,” Myka uttered, laconically, excitement and caution shackling her thoughts.

There was a brief silence.

Myka was going to start with ‘I’m sorry’, but stopped herself. “This is new, Tuesday lunchtime. I wanted to make sure…” she tapered off.

Helena chuckled. “I found myself in town when several colleagues have reneged on our arrangements rather last minute. I thought it best to make good use of my time,” Helena took a short breath, “Meeting with you would be just that.”

Myka swallowed thickly. Helena was asserting her flirting superiority, quite possibly to contrast Myka’s poor, banal attempts at flirting. The confusion and wariness were gone in an instant, replaced with anticipation and desire and lust.

Myka glanced over to her cubicle, to see Pete sitting by her desk patiently, Helena’s phrase ‘reneged on our arrangements rather last minute’ ringing in her mind, because she was about to do just that to Pete.

“What did you have in mind?” Myka answered with a question, getting right to the practicality of it.

“Let me send you an address,” Helena said, and Myka’s phone buzzed at her ear.

She checked Helena’s message - an address in Beacon Hill. Myka smirked. _Of course Helena Wells would have an address in Beacon Hill when she’s in Boston_. That’s because Helena really was the bored elitist Myka pegged her to be all those weeks ago, when they very first met.

“I’m free until half three,” Helena added and Myka brought the phone back to her ear. “When do you think you would be able to avail yourself?”

“If the T is okay, I could be there in 20,” Myka said, knowing damn well how eager she sounded. But there were, after all, practical, mitigating factors (namely, short lunch break in favour of seeing her therapist) which she was already planning to explain to Helena while stripping her from whatever clothes she was wearing.

“I’ll see you in 20 minutes, then,” Helena surmised.

“20,” Myka echoed determinedly and hung up.

She looked at Pete, feeling bad for bailing on her friend. It felt a little bit like she was cheating on him now, too, _but that’s such a ridiculous thought_ , her mind snapped her into the wonderful world where she wasn’t allowed to say ‘sorry’.

She walked out of the meeting room and put on a semi-sad face. “My friend is passing through town and asked if we could go to lunch,” she leaned over her cubicle’s wall. “We’ll do lunch tomorrow?”

“Your friend?” Pete asked.

Myka nodded.

“Your college friend?” Pete verified.

Myka nodded again.

“ _You_ had _friends_ in _college_?” Pete asked cynically.

Myka’s eyes widened with anger at the accusation. “I had friends in college,” she justified herself, even though Helena was most certainly not the kind of friend she would have made in college. She had always imagined Helena as the sort that would have gone through college with an entourage that followed her from class to class, from party to party. And Myka – Myka was the sort that haunted the paths between her dorm room, the quad and the library on her own, mostly.

Pete narrowed his eyes slightly. “Fine,” he sighed as he got up, “but you’re paying,” he pointed at her as he walked around her and out, towards the elevators.

“I’d have paid anyway, Pete,” she watched him walk away, “I always pay!” she called after him with a smile, feeling quite certain he wasn’t _really_ disappointed, but more miffed for the fact that he wouldn’t get his favourite meatball sandwich today, unless he was the one paying for it.

* * *

Myka made it to the Beacon Hill address in 22 minutes. During her fast-walk-cum-jog from the T to the address Helena sent her, she was busy coming up with answers to questions like, what if somebody saw her? What if someone who knew her, noticed her, in the middle of the day, walking around, not in the vicinity of her workplace, or worse – walking into a residential building they would know she had absolutely no business entering.

She was also upset with herself for having chosen the wrong story to tell Pete. She already had a cover story for her meetings with Helena: she was seeing a mentor. And, hypothetically, this cover story would have held water with Pete earlier, but she told Pete she was going to see a college friend, for a reason she couldn’t quite fathom. So between the station and the unbelievably quiet street in which Helena’s address placed her, she trawled through her memory for the handful of friends she had in college (because Pete’s sarcasm was always too close to the truth – Myka didn’t have many friends in college, and one wouldn’t be harsh to state that the label ‘friend’ was rather  loosely applied to most of them). She then managed to pick the one person who she knew could, hypothetically, actually be in town for a handful of hours, and was also one of the few college friends to whom the label was appropriately applied.

She made a mental note to send Abigail Cho a message on LinkedIn, and prayed silently to gods she didn’t really believe existed that Pete didn’t ask her or Claudia anything.

It was 23 minutes after she hung up the call to Helena that she stood at the door of a second-floor apartment in a townhouse she could only imagine was worth more than she could earn in two lifetimes.

Just after she knocked on the door she realised that she hadn’t given any thought to the place she was about to enter. She had been so busy figuring out the details of explaining being caught doing something out of the ordinary, she hadn’t spent a single second contemplating the true outlier: seeing Helena at an address that was not a hotel. Was this a private residence? Was this an office? Was it Helena’s? Was it her husband’s? Did they stay there together?

But the door swung open before she’d even begun to come up with possible answers, and her mind was rendered defunct upon laying eyes on the woman who opened the door. Helena was standing in the doorway to an immaculately decorated space, wearing what would have been a tailored, man’s three-piece suit, had it not been missing its jacket. The shirt was quite clearly a man’s shirt as well (judging by the lapel on which the buttons were) that was also tailored to Helena’s features. The suit, a tartan-like pattern of greys strewn with lavender comprised of trousers that hung from Helena’s hips, and a waistcoat with a smooth back in dark purple silk. Her hair was pinned skilfully at the back of her head and her face was made up with soft touches of rouge and eyeliner.

Myka knew she was gawking, but she had never seen Helena in full business attire before, and Helena in full business attire was breathtakingly stunning.

_Of course Helena was stunning,_ Myka thought. Helena was stunning irrespective of whatever it was she was wearing – or not, actually – and it suddenly occurred to her that she had seen Helena naked more than she had seen her dressed, _but Helena like this was_ … Myka’s mind short-circuited, fell short of finding apt words to describe how beautiful Helena looked. Instead, she felt a knot tighten in her stomach and the urge to swallow saliva that collected in her mouth, hungry to taste the ravishing woman in front of her.

“Come in,” Helena took a step back to welcome Myka in, and Myka took three strides into the apartment, her eyes still fixed on Helena. “Would you like a drink?”

“Water?” Myka answered with a question, licking her lips and trying to swallow saliva that suddenly wasn’t there.

Helena walked past Myka and Myka followed her with her gaze, taking in the space  through which she walked: smooth, clean surfaces, shades of grey and white on floors, tables, sofas, bookcases. Myka’s eyes wandered to inspect the rest of the apartment. Dotted blue and green and orange accents of chairs, bowls, coasters. Lights set perfectly in ceilings and under shelves, accentuating the contrasts of the greys and whites and greens and blues. It was so meticulously balanced, it looked like a picture from a Huf Haus catalogue.

There was a smattering of artwork on walls and shelves, each piece unique, intriguing; revealing a piece of a story Myka recognised, even though she didn’t know it well enough to tell it herself. Each piece seemed to absolutely fit the apartment; it was evident they were each carefully picked and placed.

_If it weren’t for the artwork_ , Myka thought, _it could have been a show home or an executive suite_. But then she noticed the handful of books on one of the shelves, no more than two dozen books that looked like a work of art in their own right, and among them was Emily Dickinson’s Series 2 - the very copy Helena was thumbing in the café on the evening they very first met.

_This is her place_ , Myka concluded, and looked back to see Helena coming back from the kitchen with a tall glass of cold water in her hand.

“Thanks,” Myka said with a smile, downed the cold liquid in two long gulps and held the glass up tentatively.

Helena inched towards her, sending questing fingers to where Myka’s top was tightly tucked into her trousers at the small of her back. “Would you like some more?” she husked, distracted, them fingers tugging gently at the Myka’s top, fingernails scraping it in search of purchase.

“Maybe later,” Myka sought Helena’s eyes. They were warm and keen and wanting. If there had been any crumbs of doubt anywhere in Myka that their previous meeting had left _Helena_ , _them_ or _what they were having_ at a loose, unpleasant end, the look in Helena’s eyes burnt them to thin dust.

Myka traced the pad of her finger from Helena’s brow to her temple, down her cheek and her neck to scuff the stiff crease in Helena’s high collar and around to where her top opened liberally to expose her freckled chest and the tops of her breasts.

Helena took the glass from Myka’s hand and pushed into her with the excuse of placing said glass on the sideboard by the door, knowing full well that such an invasion of Myka’s space would be all the invitation Myka needed to snake her arms around Helena and hold her, dip her head to tickle the crook of her neck with her nose and trail kisses up the side of Helena’s neck. Pushing into Myka like that would be all Helena would need to do to ask Myka nuzzle her, kiss her, breathe more of her scent that was trapped between her skin and the collar – sweet and musky and sweaty – all of which would surely lead to igniting Myka’s want, and for _everything else_ that Helena wanted, to _just_ happen.

And it began happening just as Helena knew it would.

And Helena, who half an hour earlier was annoyed that three business associates of hers all managed to cancel meetings with her within the space of ten minutes, leaving her all dressed up with nothing to do, was glad and relieved and so pleased that they cancelled, because – really – there was nothing she would rather do other than Myka. And for the time she had spent earlier that day, ensuring her appearance was just as close to perfect as she could get – there was no better use for that time other than to have her be so perfectly dressed so that Myka could undress her.

Upon hearing soft growls from Myka she pushed the tall woman gently away from her so she could look at her lover and smile in coy gratitude, drive strong fingers through Myka’s hair and whisper “Take me”.

Myka’s body was screaming for Helena’s, but Myka’s ego wanted to make the most of peeling Helena out from her crisp, exquisite outfit. Myka also knew that time was not on her side. She had - at best - 45 minutes before she needed to head back to her office.

She deepened the kiss while rounding her touch around Helena’s back, her hands sliding down sleek silk, leaving trails of vapour in their wake, heat transferring too quickly between hot, greedy hands and cool fabric.

Hands landing safely on Helena’s hips, Myka pushed Helena backwards, towards the grey sofa behind them while undoing Helena’s waistcoat and the shirt. She parted her lover’s outfit and drew in a sharp breath at the feel of Helena pushing herself into her palms.

_Jesus, she’s eager,_ Myka smiled and pulled back to look at Helena. She was still utterly marvellous with her dazzling ensemble half-undone, her hair ever-so-slightly tousled, and her cheeks and chest and lips flushed and glistening.

Myka let her hand slip to the front of Helena’s abdomen, to feel her breath quicken, and then lower, down her pelvis and just between her thighs, over the coarse tweed, where Helena greeted her with an impatient thrust. She took her own bottom lip between her teeth and watched Helena as she threw her head back and claimed hard friction from her hand. Myka loved it when Helena wanted to _be taken_ , but took her own pleasure whenever an opportunity presented itself.

All Helena wanted that moment was Myka. That want was palpable through her tight grip of Myka’s wrist near her centre, the tightening fist in Myka’s hair, all the while whispering Myka’s name like a mantra.

Being wanted like that, knowing just how much she was wanted spurred Myka on, to deal harder bites to Helena’s breasts, to suck harder on Helena’s chest, because there was nothing and no one else on Earth Myka wanted more than Helena.

Feeling Helena gaining momentum, Myka hurriedly undid the buttons and zip of Helena’s trousers and released them from their purchase on Helena’s hips, for which Helena thanked her with a wanton gasp.

Despite choked protests, Myka’s hands travelled up Helena’s body slowly, from the welcoming warmth of her centre up the smooth skin of her belly and up still, grazing the rough lace of her bra, until her hands rested on Helena’s shoulders, where she pushed down gently, urging Helena to sit on the sofa.

Helena obliged, holding on to the lapels of Myka’s shirt, pulling her down with her, onto her, on top of her. She kissed Myka with passion and fervour and lust but also with intent and emotion, with solace and compassion and _love_ , damn it, Helena decided to admit it herself, for once, because it all felt was too intense to be anything else but.

Myka smiled into the kiss, a smile born of levity and ease, of acceptance and comfort. It felt new to Helena and it contrasted the urgency with which Myka was kissing her down her body. That contradiction felt sweet and exciting and fresh. It was something Helena did not expect to happen, and the thought that Myka could still surprise her like that with such a simple touch, excited her even more.

Helena had expected Myka to smile one of her smiles that Helena had come to adore. A spicy, saucy smile, dripping with malice and depravity, a smile that made Helena weak at the knees and wet above them. But Myka was thrilling her differently now, with her lips taking a different shape against her breasts, and down her sternum, down her belly and to her sex, where they took new shape against her, still, exploring her, exhilarating her, fulfilling her in a whole new way to the dozens of times Myka had tasted her previously.

Whatever concerns Helena may have had about how their previous encounter had ended, about the affair becoming too intense, or too demanding or too suffocating, Myka wiped those away with her talented, wicked tongue as she poured all of herself to taking Helena, again and again.

* * *

While sitting in Irene’s office that evening, Myka couldn’t help but touch her lips. The taste of her lover was gone from them, but Myka remembered it, and the soft pads of her fingers were close enough a proxy to trigger those memories.

“I think I was wrong,” Myka said.

“About what?” Irene enquired.

“No,” Myka straightened in her seat and dragged her finger along her bottom lip and back again, “I know I was wrong,” she looked up, to a corner of the room where the light fell on the wall in a way that made it look as if the wall was a wave. Sinking in the impossibility of the optical illusion helped her think. “Or was I?” she mused quietly.

“About what, Myka?” Irene asked again.

“About emotional attachment being part of a sexual relationship,” Myka looked back at Irene.

“How so?”

“Helena and I…” she started, but wasn’t entirely sure which part of the story to tell, “something happened last week when we were together.” Myka recalled the evening at the Omni in New Haven, remembered the orgasmic, primal sex they had, remembered the conversation that ensued about how affairs were perceived by others, and how that conversation ended – with Myka frustrated and tongue-tied, acknowledging that Helena wasn’t just some woman with whom she was cheating on her wife. Acknowledging that Helena was an important part of her life, an important person in it and that whatever infatuation or admiration or adoration she had felt towards her previously, were supplemented by something deeper. By a connection. By an attachment she felt towards Helena herself and not just the sex they were having.

Irene looked at Myka looking at her, waiting for her patient to find her words.

“She was telling me about her husband, about how she talks to him about me, and how that was part of what makes their marriage work. And it made me think about Gi and how I could never talk to her about Helena, because to Gi, Helena would always be the woman I cheated on her with.”

Irene breathed evenly as Myka regarded her and wet her lips before continuing.

“And I realised that for me, Helena isn’t just the woman I’m cheating with,” Myka choked on her breath and her eyes welled up in an instant, because words were falling from her lips, words she wasn’t ready to say or hear, “Helena’s so much more to me than that now,” Myka bit her lips together, perhaps that will stop the words from being said.

And suddenly it all made perfect sense to Myka, as she reflected on her encounters with Helena. “The sex we’re having is evolving all the time, changing all the time,” Myka took a breath as tears pooled in her eyes. “And to be able to keep that up we have to be exposed, you know?” Myka checked that Irene gathered Myka wasn’t being literal, “we have to be vulnerable. And being exposed and vulnerable with someone so often creates a bond,” Myka’s fist curled around an imaginary ball. “A deep, meaningful bond,” she added quietly. “I love her.”

Irene nodded slowly and watched Myka’s ritual of drying her tears: picking a tissue out of the box, straightening it on her thigh before folding it in half, precisely, then holding the fold with both hands, bringing it to her eyes, dabbing them gently with the folded tissue.

“And the funny thing is that Gi doesn’t even know it, but Helena is a huge part of what makes _our_ marriage work now,” Myka chuckled through her tears. “Over the past few weeks things are so much easier between us, things are easier for me. I can handle her better, I can handle the house. I don’t mind it so much if I need to go to the grocery store at midnight because she didn’t find the time in her week. Or if I need to replumb the washing machine because she forgot a diaper in change bag again, or if I need to be up all night with Charlie.”

Irene nodded. “We’ve discussed how your time with Helena recharges you, that it gives you strength to deal with Giselle and life at home.”

Myka’s smile stretches thinly across her lips, and she brought her fingers to them once more. “But she doesn’t even know it,” she emphasised with a whisper. “She doesn’t even know how much _this other person_ is doing for _her_ by keeping _me_ going,” Myka drew invisible lines between three invisible dots on her thigh as she explained, marking the triangular relationship her wife was utterly unaware of.

“Do you want her to know? Because—” Irene was interrupted by an uncomfortable laugh that came in the form of a loud exhale “—when we discussed it in the past you seemed reluctant.”

“That’s an understatement,” Myka chuckled and looked at Irene, who cracked the tiniest, mischievous smile. She took a deep breath. “I don’t think I do, to be honest, not until she changes her mind about her condition.”

“Is that it?” Irene raised both her eyebrows.

“Is what it?”

“Giselle changing her mind about her depression? That’s the only trigger that will change your mind about telling her?”

“You mean what about my 50% here?” Myka alluded to a model Irene referred to time and again, usually when Myka inappropriately assumed guilt or responsibility for things that happened to her or Giselle or their son. Thing which were not Myka’s fault or responsibility. They were not hers to fix. In this case, however, Irene was asking Myka about the 50% that were Myka’s.

Irene’s smile stretched further.

“You know I don’t think more than six months ahead. You know I think there’s no point to that,” Myka asserted with a light shake of her head, a point they discussed occasionally as to whether Myka’s pragmatism bordered on pessimism. “There could be a whole bunch of things that could happen that would break me, that would make me stop waiting for her, make me stop trying to fix what we have and just walk away. But I’m not there yet and I don’t know what it will take to push me over that edge.”

She paused. “I’d love it if we could have it in the open, that she knew about it, even if not to the same extent Helena’s husband knows,” Myka stated dryly, because she and Irene had discussed this before, but Myka always felt the need to reassert her position. “But she wasn’t willing when we were last in therapy together, and with her refusing to acknowledge her depression and her refusing to see what it costs me…” Myka’s tears came back, but these were tears of anger and loss.

“What about Helena?” Irene pointed out the most obvious catalyst, the one that seemed to exert most force on Myka’s life, the one that created most momentum.

Myka narrowed her eyes while looking into Irene’s. She brought her fingers back to her lips, thinking about what it could be about Helena that would make her change her mind about telling Gi, about their life together.

From the get-go, the relationship with Helena was always about what they had offered each other physically. From the get-go, it had always been clear that the whole reason for them being together was to satisfy each other’s fascinations and fantasies of the flesh. From the get -go, it had always been clear that falling in love or loving one another, in the traditional sense, in the sense that meant that they would be together rather than with their respective partners was outside of the scope of their relationship. They had discussed this before the first time they were together at that motel on the I95. They had discussed it since. The affair was always an add-on to their lives, it was never meant to replace any of the fixtures in them.

Initially, Myka found it odd and crude that Helena had insisted on bringing that topic up. It had reaffirmed the impression she had formed of Helena, that of a bored elitist who was looking for a bit of fun. These days, though, Myka thought it was amazing and refreshing and free that they could be so unbelievably and gratifyingly into each other without all the romantic expectations of a traditional relationship.

Or at least that how things were before Myka realised she loved Helena that night at the Omni, before Helena accepted Myka, despite her raging emotions, even though Helena didn’t know what they were.

Irene watched Myka sinking into her seat in deep thought.

“Did you tell Helena you loved her?” Irene decided to prod, gently, around some truths, before she made any assumptions.

Myka shook her head, still thinking.

“Did Helena share her emotions with you?”

Myka shook her head again, starting a new trail of thoughts based on Irene’s questions. And sure enough –

“What would happen if you found out that Helena shared the sentiment?”

Myka had already begun contemplating that very question. Would her relationship with Helena change because of emotional involvement? If they loved each other, if they acknowledged that they shared a deeper connection, would that change anything? Would it change the nature of their involvement? Would it change what they met for? Would it change what they did? Would Myka _want_ Helena to do anything differently if she knew Helena loved her also? Would Myka’s expectations change?

“I’m not sure,” Myka mumbled into her fingers. She was considering scenarios against what she’d known of Helena, of her life with her husband; she was considering scenarios of her relationship with Gi. If Helena admitted her love to Myka, would that be enough for Myka to tell Gi about the affair? Would it be enough to make Myka reconsider her relationship with Gi? Would it be what made Myka end her relationship with Gi?

And oddly enough, this thread of conversation came back to where it started, even though Myka hadn’t thought that it would. There she was, contemplating whether her relationships with Helena, with Gi, would change if emotions were to be stirred in with the sex.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she grew with her position. It all depended on what her and Helena wanted to get from their relationship, love, or no love.

“Maybe I was only half wrong,” Myka said. “Maybe you can have a sexual relationship with emotional involvement, but without the expectations.”

“And what would that look like?” Irene asked, and Myka’s mind began careening through the realms of possibilities of what her relationship with Helena could be like, now that love was in the mix.


	15. XIV. (13 weeks previous)

Myka was nipping a pathway between the back of Helena’s shoulder and the protruding vertebrae at the base of her neck which made Helena giggle and hum. There was something in the affectionate familiarity of the act that reminded Myka that she, herself, was a married woman and that the skin she was marking with her teeth was that of a woman married to another.

That made Myka think about where and when they were – Helena’s apartment in Beacon Hill on a Tuesday afternoon, again, at Helena’s invitation. And all the questions Myka never got to ask when she was there the previous week still hung, unanswered, in Myka’s mind; her conversation with Irene from the previous week still resonating within her, the impact of her epiphany still unclear.

“What is it?” Helena turned around, feeling Myka slip into her thoughts. She placed an open palm on Myka’s cheek, caressing a high cheekbone with her thumb.

Myka smiled and leaned in to kiss Helena, the taste of her own arousal still lingering on Helena’s lips. She would rather be distracted by the tastes and textures of Helena’s lips than hazard a conversation about their affair again, so she kissed Helena ardently, with newly-found zeal.

Helena adored how turned on Myka got when she tasted herself on Helena, and her hand on Myka’s cheek dipped into the soft curls behind Myka’s ear, and her open palm clenched to a fist that pulled at the mane of brown curls to elicit a growl and a pounce from Myka.

Helena laughed lightly into the kiss and rolled unto her back, letting her lover loom dominating above her, which, surely, would end in a reciprocal act on Myka’s behalf.

Myka looked down at Helena, her heart pounding in her chest with the weight of emotion, anticipation and excitement. _Does it matter if she loves me?_ she asked herself as her eyes pierced Helena’s, looking at her, naughty, playful, expectant. _Do I need to hear her tell me she loves me, or is what I have, here, enough?_ she wondered, and almost as if she were trying to answer the question she dove in for kiss, and pulled Helena to her, Helena’s whole body to her own, lifting Helena’s leg and resting it around her own waist.

Since that evening in New Haven, Myka had been thinking about why the issue of love being reciprocated was such a big deal for her, and it had only been a few days since she concluded that teenage novels, romantic comedies and popular culture at large were to blame for it. She had grown up in a society that dictated that love was to be mirrored perfectly between lovers. That was the expected norm – when someone said “I love you”, the other person must say “I love you” back, or all sorts of relationship hell would ensue.

But as her fingers slipped inside Helena and Helena arched her back as a a form of equal and opposite reaction, as Helena moaned Myka’s name richly and began pulsating around Myka’s fingers, Myka couldn’t care less if Helena returned the words or reciprocated the emotion, so long as they continued doing _this_. So long as Myka continued pleasuring Helena like _this_ , so long as Helena continued speaking Myka’s name in her rapture like _this_ , so long as Helena wanted Myka like _this_ , and Myka wanted Helena like _this_.

Because _this_ was Myka’s love for Helena, _this_ was the love Myka needed Helena to reciprocate, and as far as she could tell, Helena did.

As she shook under Myka with her release, Helena whispered her want for her lover’s lips, and Myka complied all too willingly. She nipped a new pathway – from Helena’s lips to the crook of her neck, to her left nipple, down her belly, all the way to her centre, where thoughts stopped troubling Myka altogether and she simply relished in the taste and the warmth and the softness of Helena’s labia.

As Myka was kissing her way up Helena’s abdomen to prolong Helena’s afterglow of another satisfying climax, Helena’s phone pinged. That was unusual. Myka couldn’t recall a single time she had heard Helena’s phone. What was also unusual was the way in which Helena’s body pinged as well. Flesh that was soft butter a moment ago tensed and tightened, and Helena uttered a brief apology almost instantaneously, adding something not-quite-discernible that she was waiting for travel arrangements to be sent to her so she could agree them with her husband.

Myka obliged and rolled off Helena to give her full range of motion and privacy, to grab her phone on the nightstand and review whatever it was she needed to review. Suddenly, all the questions, all the thoughts, all the niggling missing details came rushing in like a king tide, ripping apart everything in its way.

Suddenly it didn’t feel okay to want Helena and have Helena want her. Suddenly it didn’t feel okay to want to excite each other and gift each other with exceptional orgasms, because Helena was married to someone else, and so was Myka. Suddenly it didn’t feel entirely okay that not three minutes ago Myka was between Helena’s legs, her mouth was on Helena’s centre, delighting Helena in a way that her husband should be; and not 20 minutes before that, Helena’s mouth was on Myka’s centre, delighting Myka in a way her own wife should be.

All this had happened in a bed in Helena’s apartment, an apartment that could just as well belong to Helena’s husband, a bed he might as well be sharing with her in a few hours, once Myka left the apartment to go back to her picket-fenced, demanding existence in a northern suburb of Boston.

And then Myka found herself thinking about Helena’s husband, and what he might be like as he strolled through the front door of the apartment she was in that moment, and the sort of conversations he might have had with Helena later that evening. She thought about the life that Helena and her husband shared and what it might be like for them to sit around the breakfast table in their Hamptons holiday home and exchange stories about their respective lovers.

It wasn’t the first time she thought about Helena’s husband, about Helena’s life. She didn’t think about them too often, but on occasion she’d wonder about all the details in Helena’s life of which she was unaware, details not dissimilar to the ones Helena didn’t know about her.

As she watched Helena’s lips move while she read the message on her phone, she thought about what Helena was like outside the beds they shared - a train of thought that occupied her more regularly than the former. What Helena was like with her colleagues, what she was like with her friends (did she even have friends?), what she was like to work with, what exercise regime she subscribed to, did she cook or paint or crochet, where was she sleeping and – sometimes – with whom.

She found it irresistible to contemplate Helena-outside-the-affair even though she had always believed it to be a taboo in their relationship. Myka had always imagined these flights of fancy to be the kind that had a strong potential to becoming too intense, and she knew that it was _that_ intensity that Helena disdained so much, and – if she were honest with herself – so did Myka. That intensity was a form of obsession and that had no place in their engagement. And yet…

“Do you ever wonder?” Myka mused aloud, watching Helena’s fingers glide over the phone’s screen at an inhuman speed.

“About what?” Helena tapped decisively to send the message, placed the phone on the bedside table and turned to face her lover.

“Me,” Myka blushed, feeling childish and foolish, knowing that by asking these questions she was seeking confirmation that Helena shared her emotion, that Helena reciprocated it.

Helena huffed and straightened herself so she could look at Myka more easily. “Why are you asking?”

“Never mind,” Myka answered and attempted to deflect by bringing Helena’s hand to her lips, to busy her mind with the Helena she has and the Helena of which knows, rather than the Helena she doesn’t. She focused on the sensory input of traversing knuckles and digits, mapping of a palmprint and fingerprints, in the hope they would postpone suffering the consequences of her badly controlled curiosity.

Helena studied her lover as she suckled on the tips of her fingers. Myka, for all her talents, was never terribly smooth at opening clandestine conversations and was even worse at sustaining them. “Do you wonder about me, Myka?”

Myka cheeks reddened, a literal manifestation of the euphemistic red hands with which she was caught, and chose to grant the knuckle of Helena’s middle finger a light bite rather than grant its owner with an answer.

Helena watched Myka and pursed her lips. She considered the night they spent together in New Haven, she considered how different Myka felt since. Helena considered how her own gut tugged every time Myka kissed her – all these gave Helena enough reason to suspect that Myka was testing to see if anything had changed between them.

“Of course I wonder about you,” Helena said and closed her eyes to let Myka’s mouth work its magic more easily on her senses. “I wonder what you look like on a Sunday morning,” she freed her imagination to conjure her favourite fantasy images of Myka: Myka in a faded College t-shirt and baggy pants, leaning casually against a kitchen counter cradling a mug of coffee, that wild mane of hers mussed and tangled, those green eyes of hers bleary and smoky; “what you would smell like after mowing the lawn,” this Myka was wearing the scent of rain and leaves on top glistening skin, a tank top and fitted capris; her hair was pulled to a messy ponytail, sweat dripping from the tip of her nose to land on her chest, speckled with chopped blades of grass, to slide down, between her breasts.

Helena was hardly the domestic type, but it was clear that Myka was; and even though Helena had no need to sleep in (or next to) faded College tees or go outside and exert herself by doing up the garden, it didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge in the daydream of taking a sleepy Myka against the kitchen counter, or breathing and biting more of that sweaty Myka while holding her body tightly to her own, as Myka’s fingers claimed another climax from her.

Myka hummed as she swirled her tongue lightly around the tip of Helena’s ring finger, thinking up her own imaginative interpretations of Helena’s life outside the bedrooms that facilitated their relationship: Helena in her yoga pants, stretched on the grey sofa in the living room of her apartment, reading a book; sometimes with a faded 70s rock band cotton top on, sometimes without. Helena in her three-piece, grey-and-lavender business suit, sitting at a table of stuffy, pompous directors, making eloquent arguments with a cocky grin and a twinkle in her eye. Helena having a drink at an upmarket, artisanal wine bar with a young woman in a tight dress; or a young man in a crisp shirt; or an older gentleman, salt and pepper hair, in a peasant top and linen trousers – Myka was, as yet, not sure of how to imagine Helena’s husband.

“I wonder what your wife looks like,” Helena spoke a thought that mirrored Myka’s perfectly, “what your house looks like.”

Myka slowed her treatment of Helena’s hand, kissing the back of it lightly, dragging her lips across soft skin. She opened her eyes to look at Helena, to find her looking back at her.

“Sometimes,” Helena started with half a smile, then stopped to take a breath. She was about to set foot on perilous grounds. “Sometimes I get jealous,” she finished her thought, “and wonder whether you touch her, whether she touches you.” _I wonder if she makes you feel the way that I make you feel_ , she thought but said nothing. _I wonder if she excites you the way that I do. I wonder if you can come just by touching her, like you can with me. I wonder if you let her touch you after you’ve come, like you let me._

As soon as she spoke Helena wondered if she’s divulged more than she should have. Helena knew better than to avail herself of such thinking, because these were the very thoughts, the very traits she abhorred in her lovers. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling jealous and angry and sad and hurt at the thought of Myka’s body shuddering with release at any hands other than her own, be those hands those belonging to her wife or another lover. Helena hated the thought of Myka speaking another’s name in her release as much as she hated herself for feeling that way.

Myka noticed a darker emotion passing over Helena, noticed there was more to Helena’s admission. Myka didn’t need to know the finite details. She knew enough. She knew that she wasn’t the only one nursing new emotions.  She knew that both Helena and she were in each other’s thoughts outside the context of their time in bed together. She didn’t need to hear Helena say that she loved her. Just by what she had just said, she reckoned Helena did.

Myka was quick to silence the voice in her that demanded she explored her growing attachment to Helena, that she explored Helena’s growing attachment to her. Myka knew it was too soon, and frankly, too scary to delve into emotional soul-searching that minute. What Helena just shared was more than enough.

Instead of satisfying her curiosity with soul-searching and terrifying questions about consequences, Myka decided to satisfy her urge to dispel the shadow that lurked over Helena, much like she had done twice before that afternoon. So she stretched up to kiss Helena’s lips and sink her fingers in black locks, committing all she had to Helena, to the kiss, to their embrace.

As the kiss waned, Myka shook her head decisively. “Gi doesn’t touch me,” Myka whispered between leftover kisses, “she hasn’t touched me in years and that one time she did was awkward and not pleasant,” Myka looked into Helena’s eyes. “And when I touched her that one time…” Myka’s voice lowered, she was forcing air through her voice box to keep her voice from breaking, “let’s just say that Gi and I crossed the point of no return when it comes to having sex.”

Helena brought her fingers to push back a wilful curl of Myka’s hair, placed it neatly behind her ear and left her hand there, to give Myka comfort, to take some from her in return.

“Don’t you remember your diagnosis the first night we were together?” Myka asked with an incredulous tone, trying to alleviate the heaviness that was beginning to smother them.

Helena hummed as a new, lewd smile blossomed across her lips and her face lit up again. “Hot chocolate in front of the telly,” she said, recalling the state of Myka’s marriage, which she assumed, at the time was the reason for Myka indulging in an affair. And Helena, being Helena, took further joy in being right.

Myka laughed at the thought of that evening, how Helena managed to piss her off with her aloof arrogance and – more to the point – her accuracy. She thought about how that evening, about what it felt like for her, how frozen and stuck she was, how her body refused to allow her to enjoy Helena, to enjoy herself. She thought about how different things were these days, nearly a year on.

“There’re things that you do to me, Helena,” Myka said, keeping a smile on her face, because otherwise, the admission she was about to impart would be too much for their affair to bear, “that I never thought I could feel. That I never thought my body could handle, that I never knew I could have,” and she pulled Helena to her for another kiss.

That kiss was a lot like the first of its kind they had shared in New Haven, and a handful more times since. It was a kiss of gratitude, of appreciation, of admiration. A kiss that was meant to articulate an emotion neither cared to put into words.

Helena felt it, though, the emotion and commitment that was poured into those kisses, and for the second time in her life, Helena did not find them overbearing or stifling. She found them comforting and energising and blissful…

…and then Helena’s phone pinged again, probably with Wolly’s confirmation…

_…and all this comes with such terrible timing_ , she thought.

Helena caressed Myka’s cheeks with her thumbs as she drew the kiss to a close and held her forehead to her own. “Myka…” she sighed.

Myka’s gut stiffened. The way Helena spoke her name was not the way she loved to hear it.

“Myka, I have to go away for a while,” she spoke softly, the back of her mind ran through what she would usually do if a lover required damage control during separation and wished, she wholeheartedly wished Myka would not be such a lover.

Myka exhaled a soft hum.

“The travel arrangements I was waiting for are a business trip my husband and I take once a year to Europe to see to our interests there.”

Myka exhaled again, carefully placing this newly acquired detail about Helena in her mind’s archive.

“I will be back in five weeks or so.”

Myka nodded mutely against Helena, the rigid sensation that started at the pit of her stomach now reaching her jaw. She didn’t think she needed to ask, but her insecurities lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July, and she felt – given everything that had happened between them over the past two weeks – she needed to know for sure, because this might be Helena’s fancy way of dousing the whole thing in cold water.

“Will I see you when I return?” Helena broke Myka’s concentration with the very question Myka had intended to ask.

Myka pulled away from Helena to look at her – see her expression, see her eyes, see _why the hell is she asking me this?_ and it dawned upon Myka, as she regarded the bored, haughty elitist who mocked her mercilessly less than 10 months ago and now appeared apologetic and full of both regret and hope, that Helena _just might_ love her, too.

“What do you think?” Myka smirked and took Helena’s lips in hers.


	16. XV. (9 weeks previous)

Helena sat silently in the taxi, looking out the window as the wet streets and piazzas of Rome whizzed by, street lights and headlights reflected and twinkling everywhere. _It’s like driving through a star-studded sky_ , she thought, and her mind filled with poetry and Massive Attack to suit the European autumnal gloom.

It had been four weeks now that she had been away, four weeks of meetings with lawyers and boards and editorial staff; meetings with shareholders and investors and interested parties. It had been four weeks of travelling and staying in lavish hotels, having lavish meals with lavish people – more people than Helena usually would see in four weeks. But Helena felt alone.

She recognised that what she was feeling false alone-ness. This was a contrary anti-socialness, because the one person she wanted to see was four thousand miles away and six hours behind, which felt like a lifetime when all she had at her disposal was email. And the written word – as powerful as Helena knew it was – couldn’t come close to filling the gap not being in Myka’s presence left, because her relationship with Myka was so physical.

Ordinarily, missing someone would not be the root cause of such blues. It was the fact she missed Myka in a way she had never missed a lover, in a way that made her feel lovelorn. It was the fact she missed Myka in a way she hadn't missed anyone, in fact, bar one person – her husband – and she hadn't missed him _this way_ in over a decade. Each of these facts bothered her, as did their sum total.

They bothered her, firstly, because of the plain and simple fact she would rather spend an evening in bed with Myka, than another night in bed alone.

Secondly, it bothered her because missing a person this way made her feel obsessed and needy, which, in her opinion, were two of the least attractive characteristics a woman could wear.

Lastly, it bothered her because the person whose company she _was_ sharing, who sat across from her in the taxi was her husband, and missing Myka the way she used to miss him, felt wrong and ominous to her; as though her lover might be encroaching on the emotional territory that always belonged to Wolly, and him alone.

Before she could reach a meaningful conclusion, the taxi driver pulled up in front of their hotel. William paid and Helena bid their thanks in Italian and they walked out of the car and into the hotel. Helena paced, sombre and ghost-like, to the elevator while William stopped at the front desk to check for messages.

They went up to their suite on the fifth floor in silence, walked in in silence, removed coats and boots in silence and Helena walked to the armchair by the coffee table, picked up the book she had left there that morning (Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Myka’s recommendation) and sunk in to distract herself with a bit of dystopian existential sadness.

She could hear Wolly busying in the background, calling for room service, making tea, tapping out emails and texts on his laptop and phone, but the homelike sounds of him around her made her sadder, somehow, because she missed Myka in a way that she felt was unfair to her husband, who she knew still loved her, who she knew still made sacrifices for her.

So she decided to focus. She read _harder_ , slower, took the time for fully paint in her mind’s eye the images Ishiguro sketched with his words, until William stepped into her space on purpose, placed a cup of tea on the table near her and sat in the armchair opposite.

She closed the book and looked as its paperback cover. She ran her fingers on the matt printed cardboard, so smooth and cool and inanimate. So different to what her fingertips craved, to what she was missing.

She dared not raise her eyes to look at her husband, who she feared would be hurt by what she had allowed to happen between her and a lover.  She never intended for it to happen, she never thought it _could_ happen. She never thought it probable (if she were to take on Artie’s observation on the matter).

“I know, darling,” he said, breaking the awkward silence, one he hadn’t shared with his wife for a very long time.

She looked up at him from across the room. He was cradling his cup of tea, looking so dapper in his suit, looking young for his age, his eyes smiling kindly at her.

“I know that you love her,” he added clarity. “I know that you love her, and it’s okay that you do. So please stop beating yourself up about it because you’re being a miserable git and absolutely no fun at all,” he smiled in a way he only smiled at Helena.

She exhaled a sigh through a loose smile. “I never meant for this to happen,” she said quietly shaking her head listlessly.

“We never mean for it to happen, darling,” he leaned forward, placed his tea on the table next to hers, and placed a consoling hand on her knee, “but sometimes it just does.”

Helena looked back to the book that was in her lap, the premise of which triggered thoughts about human nature, how easily we, as people, convince ourselves of a truth and can happily live with it, irrespective of the irreparable damage it brings others.

“Do we need to renegotiate?” William asked seriously, all hints of playfulness erased.

Helena looked at him for a long minute. She couldn’t recall the last time he spoke to her with his serious tone. Possibly during their first negotiation, over fifteen years ago.

She considered the last time they had a heart-to-heart, nearly six months previous, when it was Helena who suggested they renegotiated the terms of their relationship. It was Wolly who was at a loose end that time – it was Wolly at a loose end most times, actually, if not all of them – with Liam insisting they were exclusive and that William left Helena, or else... At least that’s how it used to be, until that moment.

Liam’s ultimatums never came to fruition, and the one that was troubling William six months ago was no different. After a short rift during which Liam went on a wilderness adventures with his army buddies, life went back to its normal course between Wolly and his malestress, only William had explicitly promised Liam exclusivity – the kind that meant he wouldn’t be seeing anyone bar Liam, with the exception of Helena, with whom he did not have a sexual relationship.

During that conversation, six months ago, William said something to Helena, echoed one of her thoughts-cum-emotions about the spaces which William and Myka occupied in her, how Myka filled gaps that William had never filled for Helena, and vice versa. _Are they still filling gaps that were never filled by the other?_ she thought, and while her logic answered a resounding ‘Yes’, something about that calculation felt out of sorts.

_It was love_ , she realised, _damned love_.

“I don’t know,” she sighed and took a breath to continue. “Largely speaking, the situation is much as it was six months ago,” she looked into his eyes again. “The parts she fills in me, what she gives me are things that you either never filled or haven’t filled in a very long time.”

William narrowed his eyes slightly, a very Britishly subtle way to hurry along the inevitable ‘but’.

“All but one part,” Helena lifted her hand and stretched her index finger, as she thought about that single part. The part that filled with utter joy knowing that she will be seeing Myka; the part that pulsed with affection for her wellbeing, for her happiness; the part that delighted in every aspect of Myka, from the sexy and sublime to the awkward and ridiculous; the part that ran out of air at the sight of her, at the sight of her eyes.

That part had never been touched by any other lover. That part had always been solely occupied by William Wolcott: by how jubilant his eyes were even at the hardest of times, and the comfort with which they filled Helena; by how dashing he looked and how debonair he was and how he was then able to mock himself with her (and only with her), and how her heart swelled when he would walk into a room; by how he could spark every emotion in her to life – from sheer glee to utter anger  – and how alive he made her feel.

And now, it would seem, that part was occupied by Myka Bering as well.

“The part that made me want to marry you, William…” she started and regretted it as she did.

His relentless stare did not let her leave her thought unfinished.

“The part that makes me want to stay married to you. She’s in there as well.”

Helena could read William’s eyes and the emotion they would paint across his face before it became apparent. What she read in his eyes confused her, and then her husband smiled at her, a full, happy smile.

“How can you be so happy about this?” Helena shrugged, the pain of her confession pinning her to the chair in which she sat.

“My darling wife,” William leaned back in his seat, “The brightest, kindest, most fierce person I had ever known. The person whose happiness I put above all else…”

Helena shrunk at his loving tirade, his conviction for her cutting through her like a hundred knives, and she squirmed with the phantom pain of guilt in her seat.

“…why would I not be so completely and supremely pleased to know that there is one more person in your life who can bring you happiness? Who can make you happy?”

She eyed him like a sad puppy.

“Darling,” he got up to sit himself on the floor, at her feet, “I truly am happy that Myka brings you a happiness I couldn’t bring you in nearly two decades. I feel relieved at the notion that you may have found your Liam, and I damn well hope she is less capricious,” he beamed at her.

She chuckled despite herself. Liam could be rather high maintenance for a malestress.

“It’s only because I am the male of the species and therefore, by default, I am emotionally stinted and more prone to hide my emotions behind a façade of arrogance that I haven’t declared my love to him, or to myself, for that matter,” he tried to assuage her guilt with his truth, albeit dowsed in self-deprecation. “I applaud your courage, dear wife, for making a bid for a happiness I can only dream of.”

She brought her hand to his cheek for a loving caress, because everything about him on the floor in front of her flooded the part in her that made her marry him with fresh air and bright light that dispelled any and all notion of guilt and sadness. “I do love you, silly man,” she said and kissed his lips gently.

As she did, she felt how similar yet different her love for William was to her love for Myka. How the simple act of a caress or a kiss filled her with happiness, but then that happiness would branch differently, inspiring other emotions within her, depending on whether it was William she was kissing, or Myka.

“Now, will you stop being a sourpuss and come out for a drink with me?” he asked, and Helena could not turn her love down.

* * *

Myka was tired.

No, that wasn’t true. Myka was exhausted.

That wasn’t true either.

If there was a word in the English language that meant being more tired than exhausted to a point of very real, physical collapse, it will have been the correct word to describe Myka’s state, how her body felt, so wrung out she was no longer processing physical sensations.

If one had asked Claudia to explain Myka’s state, she would have probably said that Myka was suffering complete power management failure paired with catastrophic disk fragmentation that triggered meltdown in her central processing unit.

If one had asked Pete, he’d have said Myka was running on what fumes leave behind after the engine burnt them.

(If one had asked Irene, she’d have just stared at one blankly with a quirked brow.)

If one had asked Myka, she’d have said she just about made it through a perfect storm by the skin of her teeth: a shitty couple of weeks at work, her son having the kind of stomach bug that made The Exorcist feel like a light-hearted comedy, her partner only half-functioning due to a myriad of reasons (or excuses, depending how forgiving or sympathetic Myka felt at the moment one asked her) which left an even larger-than-usual chunk of childcare and housework on her to do list; all that _and_ the sad coincidence that Myka had little-to-no down or away time.

If one had asked Myka, she would have said that she felt like she had used up all her energy, that she had nothing in her left to give. She would have said that she had no energy being put back in.

On Sunday, just after 2pm, after putting their son down for a nap as the sun began to set on a weekend that had consisted mostly of cooking and cleaning while making sure her son wasn’t getting into anything he shouldn’t have, Myka was collapsed on the sofa in the living room, and was fast falling asleep.

It was a peaceful slip into unconsciousness, sedation spreading through her without any resistance, like iodine crystals subliming into rich, violet gas. It felt wonderful to succumb to it, to let it disable her mind and paralyse her body and cover them in a thick, protective layer that disconnected her from her current surroundings.

It was the sound of a body flopping into the other sofa, followed by a purposefully audible sigh that pierced through the soporific armour in which she was clad and shook her into semi-awareness.

Before opening her eyes she thought what that sigh could mean, because, categorically, every sigh meant something for Gi, to a point that sighs were a new language. Myka thought how much she had in her to actually hold the conversation that sigh was asking to start.

She began trawling her memory for clues that would determine Gi’s state of mind before entering the conversation. That was critical as it was a direct indication for Myka: how much of the conversation Gi was likely to carry herself. Oftentimes Gi would indicate that wished to say something, but then would shy away from articulating it, and she, thus, relinquished the responsibility of finding that out to Myka. It was up to Myka to excavate the reason, the feeling, the thought, through emotionally intelligent questioning.

What Myka invariably found at the end of every dig, was that she was so _so_ tired.

Then Gi sighed again, so Myka opened her eyes and despite every bone and muscle and tendon in her body refusing to heed, she pulled herself up to sit and look at her wife.

“Are you okay?” was the laconic question Myka could muster after a handful of silent looks exchanged over the coffee table.

“I thought we would spend more time together this weekend,” Gi said with a meek smile.

Myka’s logical mind clicked open a virtual accounting spreadsheet, recollecting all the things she did over the weekend: around the house, in the garden, in the kitchen, with their son; and all the peripheral things that these involved: shopping trips, talking to neighbours, navigating City Hall applications, installing white goods, repairing toys, etc. etc. etc… - most of which were with her family or nearby to them, or in close quarters. Her shoulders slumped under the weight of all the things she had done for and with her family over the weekend.

“I thought we would all do something together this evening,” Gi explained, “as a family.”

Myka looked up at Giselle, whose mood had taken a dive over the past few week and she fell ill (Myka was sure the two were inextricably connected, much to her wife’s disapproval of the theory). She tried to look at the situation from Gi’s perspective. So she began trawling through her memory again, and recalled that on Thursday, just before the weekend, when they were sitting much like they did that moment, discussing all the things that needed doing around the house sooner rather than later, Giselle mused briefly about doing something fun. To which Myka responded with half a smile and something along the lines of ‘yeah, that’ll be cool’.

And Myka recalled that at the time she noted to herself that this could be yet another implicit request from Gi that Myka should arrange something, but Myka got distracted then by the cat throwing up somewhere in the house, and that was the end of that conversation.

Giselle bringing her comment up reminded Myka of the on-going, all-out conflict she had with herself, one she so often unpacked with Irene, talking through the warring factions within her: complying with Gi’s implicit requests, or doggedly attempting to get her to make her requests explicit.

Myka was aware that the compliant, placating side of her was keen to deliver, to appease, to make happy. It was easy to obey it because it was also the path of least resistance. Technically, she could search a nearby attraction for them to go to, book some tickets, and that was that.

But the other side, the belligerent, combative side that recognised Gi’s request as passive-aggressive, refused to play ball because complying meant committing _even more_ mental and physical resources that Myka didn’t have in her, and was also enabling Giselle’s in a way that Myka knew she could no longer sustain.

Her belligerent self’s response was _‘what did you have in mind?’_ , to get Giselle to contribute. But she never actually spoke, partly because her placating self wouldn’t let her, and partly because she knew this would start their version of a fight which included long, sulky silences and hurtful pouts and which would, in the grand scheme of things, take yet more of the energy Myka didn’t have. So instead she let her eyes fall shut, and her head lull on top of the soft cushions of the sofa behind her, and she exhaled tiredly.

Giselle wound up breaking the silence. “You’ve been so much better lately, and you’re always so busy, I just thought all of us could spend more time together and do something fun.”

So much in that sentence filled Myka with resentment. Firstly, the underlying assumption that it was her not being well that kept them from doing things. Then, it was the implied accusation Myka didn’t spend enough time with her son and her wife. Then, a somewhat ungrateful statement that nothing that Myka did for her family was fun, and therefore didn’t count. She didn’t even get to resenting the fact she had no time for herself between work and home, or the fact she was beyond exhausted.

Myka knew all these thoughts were a knee-jerk reaction, an overdramatization, reading too much into what Giselle was actually asking.

What she was left after weeding out her own unhelpful commentary was this: “I’m just so tired, Gi,” the words fell from her, an inevitable admission, like leaves succumbing to autumn and falling from their branches, “I’ve had a really difficult couple of weeks, and I am overwhelmed, and I’m just…” she sighed, “I just want to rest. I _need_ to rest.”

Giselle looked down at her hands which she kept in her lap, then she looked up at Myka, then down again. “I thought you were better, you looked like you were doing so much better.”

_This is novel_ , Myka’s mind commentated. Gi noticing something about her, about how she behaved, about how she felt. Not only that, Gi actually took the time to say something. For the first time in many, many months, Giselle was the one to open a conversation and continue it. _Long may it last_ , Myka wished in her mind.

“I suppose I have been better,” Myka answered, because she had been. Since Claudia’s Spartan gambit and certainly since seeing Helena – she had outlets for her stress and massive inlets of energy. And what’s more, she felt needed and desired and not lonely and dejected. She no longer stood on the rim of a gaping, barren canyon haunted by the ghostly whispers of her unmet expectations and needs, those her partner ceased to fulfil; a canyon she’d roamed endlessly, on her own, for five long year.

Over the past 10 months that canyon had been transformed into a lush valley, abundant with life in a way far greater than Myka could have ever imagined.

But – Helena had been away for 4 weeks; and her relationship with Claudia was still strained. So the things that fed Myka most during the time she had been better, weren’t feeding her at all these days.

She looked at Giselle, who was now looking back at her, fingers fidgeting in her lap.

Myka waited, to see if Giselle would ask the next question.

Two silent minutes passed.

Myka gave up. “Things at work have been really difficult the past few weeks with the restructure and new management and nobody knows what they want done… I don’t even get to do what I love anymore, I don’t get to do my job. It’s all admin stuff and interviews and management meetings…” she volunteered with a sigh, because the novelty, it would seem, had worn off. “Charlie’s been sick, Pete’s been busy moving house, and training with Claud has been really hard…” she paused, and accounted for the largest contributor for her lack of energy in her mind. “I’ve just had no energy coming in the past couple of weeks. It’s all been spend-spend-spend and nothing to coming in to replenish it,” she looked up at Giselle who looked hurt, now.

Myka wondered what it was, from everything she had said, that hurt her.

“Not even me?” Giselle asked after a while.

_No_. Myka thought without a millisecond to spare, and then elaborated: _not with your grumbling when Charlie wakes up in the middle of the night, not with the constant grump you wake up with every single morning, not with your inability to do things around the house, not with your complete collapse and disappearing in the evenings, not to mention the lack of interest, the lack of conversation, the lack of initiative, the lack of willingness to admit to having a problem and the subsequent taking care of it…_ But “No.” was all she said.

Giselle’s eyes welled up, so she looked down. Myka could see her tears falling. “I don’t really want to go back to counselling,” she said with a careless shrug, “but if you want me to, I’ll go with you.”

Myka knew that Giselle meant for the statement to be a gesture of goodwill, that Gi was offering Myka what she thought Myka wanted to hear. But every word Giselle uttered crushed Myka a little bit more, leaving Myka buried under an avalanche of responsibility for their collective wellbeing. It would be, once again, up to Myka to make a call to arms. It would be Myka’s fight that Gi will join because that’s what Gi thought Myka wanted.

Fact of the matter was, Myka didn’t want to start another round of couple’s counselling. She barely had the emotional energies to keep seeing Irene, keep seeing to her own welfare. She had none to budget for her relationship with her wife, which – at that moment – felt too far gone to fix. “I appreciate it,” Myka croaked, reciprocating Gi’s gesture with an act of kindness, “but I don’t think I can right now. I don’t have the strength,” Myka leaned across the coffee table, plucked a tissue from the box that stood in its middle and handed it to Giselle.

Giselle took the tissue from Myka and blew her nose, looking at her wife and her own hands intermittently.

Myka watched her, wondering what the next statement will be.

“I feel sorry for us, Myka.”

Myka nodded, welling up, _that sounds about right_ , she thought. _Another novelty_ , she noted, _Gi realising just how bad things are_.

Myka felt sorry for Gi and herself two and a half years ago, and then two years ago, and then the previous year – at the end of every round of therapy, the last one concluding just before their son was born. Myka felt sorry because every round of counselling they went through just made it clearer to her that Giselle wasn’t doing the work. She would sat in those comfortably furnished rooms with smart and capable therapists, but her participation felt to Myka like lip service. There was no impact, no engagement, no further thought, no follow-up action. Nothing.

Over time Myka had come to the realisation that Giselle might be incapable of participating, rather than simply unwilling. That was the first time Myka realised she had lost the woman she married.

So Myka wasn’t feeling sorry anymore.

Myka was feeling grief.


	17. XVI. (8 weeks previous)

Myka’s phone hummed a lot for a Wednesday afternoon. Had Myka been at her desk, she’d have known this, but Myka was at a board meeting where future cutbacks were discussed, so no phones were allowed in the room.

When she finally returned to her desk after 6pm, Pete was putting on his jacket, ready to leave. “How was it?”

Myka groaned and rubbed her temples as she walked around the bank of cubicles to reach hers.

“That good, huh?” Pete smiled and walked towards her with arms open, to give her a hug.

“Gently,” Myka whispered and braced herself for impact – Pete’s hugs were genuine, full-contact hugs, and she usually loved them (only from Pete), except for the fact that her whole body was bruised from the weekend, from that _stupid_ race Claudia signed them up to.

“Damn, Mykes,” Pete wrapped her up with uncharacteristic lightness and grace of movement, “that thing really broke you,” he let her go and took measure of her, tip to toe.

“Mark my words,” she glared at him, “Never. Again,” she enunciated ominously.

“That’s what they all say,” Pete laughed. “You’ll be signing up for a Beast next year,” he spoke from experience.

Myka shuddered at the idea of an additional ten miles and an additional ten obstacles on top of what she had managed to endure on the Sunday before. To stop herself from feeling the pain that was pulsing through her throughout the whole day, she focussed on pulling her things together, patting her pockets for her keys and her phone.

Pete held Myka’s phone to her. “I kept an eye on it, like you asked, and it kept ringing, but it wasn’t Gi, so I didn’t answer.”

“Thanks,” Myka smiled brightly at him. “I can’t think of a better person to screen my calls.”

“No probs, partner,” he placed a soothing hand on her shoulder. “I’m totally blaming you, though, when Kelly yells at me for not being home sooner to help her unpack the new sofas.”

Myka nodded firmly with a smile, “I take full responsibility.”

“See you tomorrow?” he declared as he began walking away.

“See ya, Pete.”

He was already halfway down the hall when he waved to her gleefully.

“Thanks again,” she yelled after him and looked down at her phone.

12 unanswered calls, no texts, no messages.

She tapped the call log to see who rang and amidst a bunch of numbers she didn’t recognise – oh – her breath caught in her throat and her heart skipped a beat. No. It skipped several.

Helena.

Myka knew she should be back that week, but didn’t know when.

Her heart fluttering in her chest, she felt like a teenager finding a love note in their locker. Or, more recently, like after she jumped into the starting pen on Sunday’s race, or just before sinking her teeth into the burger she’d ordered with Claudia after it was all over… a mix of exhilaration and anticipation – knowing what was coming, but not.

She looked around her, stretched her neck to check for any overzealous employees who were burning the candle at both ends in their cubicled desks. None were within earshot.

She sat down and tapped the number, barely containing the smile that stretched across her lips.

“Helena Wells,” she answered, and Myka breathed with noticeable relief.

_You’re ridiculous_ , she chided herself, _so relieved just to hear her voice. You’re ridiculous_. “Hey,” Myka spoke softly, ignoring the self-flagellation.

“I beg your pardon, I need to take this,” she heard Helena order distantly, then she heard some muffled handling of the phone, then four seconds of silence. She was guessing Helena was getting or waiting for privacy. “Darling,” Helena whispered after a moment of silence. Myka didn’t know it, but Helena’s whisper was relief incarnate, knowing that she would be seeing Myka soon enough.

What Helena didn’t know was that her simple iteration of that term of endearment painted Myka’s face with the same relief her whisper did. “You’re back?” Myka asked, trying to contain her excitement.

“Arrived just…” Helena paused briefly to check the time, “55 minutes ago.”

“Eager, are we?” Myka bantered and bit on her lip, curbing the smile that took over her, the manifestation of such lascivious thoughts.

“Are we not?” Helena retorted with the same cocky currency, somewhat reluctant to be the first to admit that _by all the gods, I missed you so._

Myka hmphed a small laugh at how teenage this conversation had become.

Then Helena took a brisk breath in and spoke. “I’m afraid I can’t make our appointment tomorrow because I’ve been summoned to New York following our time in Europe,” she spoke clearly, matter of fact and business-like, as though someone had walked into the room and Helena needed to get her act together.

“Oh,” Myka was a little disappointed, “Okay.”

Helena didn’t leave Myka much time to process. “I was hoping we can catch up tonight? Quick bite, perhaps, in Beacon Hill?”

“It’s already 6:30,” Myka said, “I won’t have more than an hour,” she said, stretching her schedule as far as it would go.

“That should do it,” Helena’s tone and approach were unwavering. “We can go through everything else next week.”

“Sure,” Myka was a tad confused. _Helena started out eager and playful but wound up so to-the-point and maybe a bit_ … Myka hesitated in her thought, _cold_ , she determined. And there were things to go through? What was that all about? _Maybe Helena was flirting_ , she thought, _but that’s not her style_. Helena was usually suave and elegant and alluring. The Helena she was speaking to was blunt and brusque and transactional. It was hard for Myka to explain the gap, but she couldn’t help herself from wanting to examine it in person. “When?”

“Now?” Helena asked, letting her eagerness peek once more.

“Twenty-three minutes,” Myka said, having already pegged the length of the journey between her office and Helena’s apartment.

“I can’t wait,” Myka could hear the smile in Helena’s voice, which made her smile in return.

* * *

As Myka rushed up the stairs as best she could given the state of her muscles post-Spartan, she heard a door open on the floor above her. As she turned towards the last flight of stairs, she saw Helena, waiting for her in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame, hands in her pockets.

Upon seeing Myka reaching the last few steps, she walked towards her, reaching a helpful hand out with a brash smile. Myka took her hand and felt the discernible pull from her counterpart, getting them into the apartment and behind closed doors as soon as possible.

“You can mock how eager I am later,” Helena breathed as she took Myka to her, ran warm hands up her sides and down her back, leaving one hand at the curve of her backside and sending one up again, to the back of Myka’s neck, so she could hold her in the kiss they had started as soon as Helena finished speaking.

Myka tried to think up witty things to say to Helena about being keen, about being desperate. Whatever she came up with, she knew she could never speak because every single pun was true about her as well. She, too, was keen and eager and desperate to kiss Helena, to feel her, to taste her – she was grateful that Helena was as impatient as she was.

Helena broke the kiss so they could get to the bedroom already (it was quicker when they didn’t have to negotiate the hallway while trying to undress each other). Once there, Myka pulled her in for another kiss and deft fingers began undoing buttons and clasps and buckles and zippers, until they both were mostly naked and on Helena’s bed.

Myka asserted herself, dictating the pace of the kisses and pushing Helena to her back with her hands greedy at Helena’s breasts. Helena gasped and pulled Myka on top of her, ready to feel the body, the lips, the hands, the fingers she had missed over the past five weeks.

And Myka did not disappoint. Helena felt her everywhere. One moment she was at her breasts, then she was sloping down her belly. Then she was skirting her thigh, then she was at the nape of her neck. Then she was at her waist, then she was touching her, then kissing, then inside her, then out, then tongue then fingers again… Feeling Myka all over her after not having felt her for such a long time was intense as it was overwhelming in a new way for Helena’s senses.

The newness in itself, as well as Myka’s omnipresence, felt strange for Helena. She had known Myka long enough to predict her movements, to know her preferences. And yet, every touch of Myka’s lips on her skin felt fresh, every sweep of her fingers felt as though she’d never felt it before. It was wonderful and exciting, so she let Myka find her, explore her and take her.

And, oh, Myka did not disappoint. Helena was brought to the edge and was tumbled over it time and again, being given the notion that Myka was well worth the five weeks’ wait.

Content with how their reunion had commenced, Helena hummed richly as she reversed their positions, purred into Myka’s lips and the crook of her neck and the shell of her ear and her cheekbone while her hands roamed Myka’s body, fervently feeling how smooth skin turned to gooseflesh under her palms and fingertips, scraping skin with short fingernails and squeezing flesh lightly between digits.

Myka’s breathing, however, did not fall into the pattern Helena had expected. Instead of drawn out breaths and soft moans, sounds Helena had missed terribly, Myka was breathing in sharply, her muscles tensing and twitching under Helena’s touch. When she kissed Myka, Helena felt Myka was wincing.

Doing her best to rein in her enthusiasm, Helena paused and leaned back to take a look at Myka, see what had changed.

“What are you doing?” Myka muttered and tried to pull Helena back to her.

Helena’s eyes scanned the part of Myka she could see – her face and her neck, then her shoulders and the top of her chest – and that’s when she saw it. Bright red and roughly the size of Helena’s palm. She shot up with alarm, sat up next to Myka so she could see all of her.

“Helena?” Myka drowsily shook off the intoxicating threads of arousal that already bound her, on her back, to Helena’s bed. “What’s wrong?” her tone turned alarmed when she noticed Helena’s expression, somewhere between shock and horror.

“Darling,” Helena breathed out and reached a slow, gentle touch to the large bruise spread across Myka’s chest. She then noticed a dark patch under Myka’s upper arm and reached to explore it, moving Myka’s arm a bit to expose the bruise in all its glory. “What’s all this?”

Helena, now concerned as to the full extent of Myka’s subdermal trauma, looked down Myka’s body to see more of these deep, hideous marks all over Myka’s body: down her belly, along her waistline, outside her thigh, over her knees, down her shins. Every new discovery elicited a soft gasp from Helena and the gentlest touch to discoloured skin. “Are you in pain?” She asked eventually, when she turned her gaze back to Myka.

Myka chuckled mutely. She was in pain. There was not a single muscle, tendon and bone in her body that did not ache from the Spartan experience she had completed two days previous. And – while Helena’s touch and lips were extremely pleasurable, they each pierced her with a second edge, that of sharp pain, if Helena touched a sore muscle or a bad bruise, which was exceptionally likely to have happened. That’s because approximately 75% of her body was sore or bruised. 

But Myka wanted to feel Helena, even if that pleasure was doused with more pain than they had previously toyed with, a thought that excited her as much as it surprised her. So she nodded stiffly while closing her eyes, giving up on her right to pleasure, faced with such pervasive pain.

“However did ---“ Helena started, but then remembered that moronic obstacle course Myka told her about, and – heavens – that took place the weekend just gone. She froze where she was, naked, sitting next to Myka who was also naked. She knew what she had planned to do to Myka, she knew what she was meant to be doing next, but given Myka’s state… She wasn’t sure what she should do next. She wasn’t sure she could. She so badly wanted to ravish Myka the same way Myka did her. She wanted to feel that body she so direly missed crumble under her touch, she wanted to feel Myka’s satin skin quiver, she wanted to feel her muscles clench. She wanted to feel shattered breaths as those were exhaled in delight, she wanted to hear gasps and cries that would elate Helena almost as much as her fingers would Myka.

But looking at pale, white skin stained with clouds of blood; knowing the pain that induced them, knowing the pain they elicited still, Helena couldn't bring herself to touch Myka with careless abandon. She couldn’t bring herself to claim anything from Myka’s body, because it looked wrung and wronged. And while she and Myka had begun experimenting more rigorously with pain in their pleasure, this, she felt, was a step too far, too soon.

Her fingers skimmed Myka’s skin, blemished and discoloured. She could only imagine the force took to damage blood vessels to this extent: Myka’s body being thrashed against metal frames and wooden platforms, her body skidding against wet rocks and hard ground. But some of the bruises were rather sensitively located, and Helena became curious.

Helena’s fingers travelled to Myka’s other shoulder and the gently turned her arm up. Silken pads traversed trembling skin to reveal a visage similar to the one on Myka’s other arm: a mean-looking pool of bright purples and reds surrounding Myka’s underarms. “How did you acquire these bruises?” Helena asked with a soft whisper.

Myka took a deep breath and opened her eyes, having been lulled into a mesmerised state by Helena’s ghostly massage of her aching body. She looked at Helena who was examining the bruise that extended from her mid upper arm all the way to her armpit. “Uhm,” she took a moment to think of what it was she did during the race that could hurt her there the most. “I think that's the eight-foot walls,” she answered.

“Walls?” Helena enquired, emphasising the plural ‘s’ sound at the end of the word.

Myka nodded. “Two of them. Had to be scaled on one side and jumped down the other.”

“And did this…” Helena fingers tickled Myka’s underarms and she shivered, “occur on the way up or the way down?”

Myka took a moment to recall that part of the race. The first wall was harder to scale than the second, as Myka faltered on her run up and had to use more upper body strength to pull herself up. On the second wall, while the ascent was smoother, descent was not quite - Myka slipped down the face of the wall, wet from previous participants. She used her arms to stop herself from an uncontrolled landing that would have cost her much more than a bruise. “You know, I'm not sure. Probably both,” she answered and watched Helena’s eyes close and her face soften as she leaned in and placed the gentlest of kisses on the bruise.

Helena wrapped her palm around Myka’s arm and smoothed it lightly, before travelling to the dark red patch with fading brown edges adorning Myka’s chest. “And this?” she asked.

Oh, Myka remembered that one. “That was the 80lb cement ball,” she answered with a smirk, one of the most wretched things she experienced in the race, having had to pick it up from the floor, run 50 meters with it, drop it to the floor, do 5 burpees, pick it up and run back. It was one of the last obstacles and by that point, Myka had had enough.

“80-pound cement ball?!” Helena enunciated in disbelief and looked into Myka’s eyes.

Myka nodded with a knowing smile.

“What is the point of that?” Helena sought logic where there was none.

“What's the point of any of it,” Myka shrugged, her smile turning lopsided, “other than to prove that you can?”

Helena granted that bruise a light touch of her lips before shaking her head with a judgmental tut. Her palm slid down Myka’s front, to the boundary between her belly and hip, where the bruises took the form of thick lines at varying angles, almost as though Myka was lashed there. “These?”

“Cinder blocks on a chain,” Myka closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth of Helena’s touch. She did miss it so. “We had to drag them around a muddy track”, she waited for Helena’s kiss with bated breath and sighed her gratitude when it arrived. She was surprised when it followed by a handful of others, one for every visible line, she assumed.

Helena didn't stop kissing. She continued a light path of lips on skin, smoothing where her lips had been with a soft caress until she reached another bruise, mean and red, on Myka’s outer thigh.

“We were crawling in a brook under a low bridge. I think I bumped a rock or something,” she volunteered without Helena asking, only to have her breath taken away by a series of open mouthed kisses on the large stain that covered a large portion of her thigh.

Helena’s lips and tongue continued their journey south and paused on Myka’s dark blue knee with slow, satin wisps. Helena’s fingers pressed gently behind said knee, which drew a gasp, an arched back and a thick hum from Myka before she explained.

“That’s is from the uphill climb under barbed wire. These was a whole section on an exposed rock face.”

Helena caressed Myka’s other knee gently and continued to slide down her legs, with delicate kisses and tender touches, feeling Myka twitch and writhe in response. “And this?” Helena asked before busying her mouth with Myka’s shin and her palms reaching for her feet.

“This,” Myka released a short laugh, triggered by pressure points in her feet being pushed and the memory of the impact to her shin. “I was climbing out of the river swim and the banks were very slippery. I thought if I ran up the bank fast enough I’d get out, but I tripped. No idea what on,” she said and snickered, remembering how silly she felt initially, and then how that trip became a mascot for her and Claudia for the two hours that followed, both relieved that Myka got her trademark, colossal fall out of the way early in the race and managed it with a relatively low cost.

Helena muttered to herself as she began kissing her way back up Myka, not entirely sure what to make of her lover’s experience and the impact it would reveal. She was considering what such an intense physical experience would do to Myka. She considered what it might have done to her bond with her team mate, her friend who was also a sister of sorts. She wondered if anything had come of their previous conversation, the one that had caused Myka such discomfort. All those thoughts passed through her mind until she encountered another haphazard collection of deep blue, red and purple lines, printed on the inside of Myka’s thigh. She pulled away to examine the whole of it, and noticed fewer and faded twin marks mirrored on Myka’s other inner thigh. “How on Earth would you bruise here?” Helena ruminated, pushing Myka’s legs apart gently, touching the tips of her fingers to sensitive skin. Her curiosity getting the better of her, Helena was oblivious to the effect that particular gesture had, and how Myka had responded to the non-verbal demand rather than the verbal one with a quiet moan and sliding her pelvis down towards Helena.

Helena was fascinated by the fact that the prints on Myka’s skin have acquired a third dimension. Such was the extent of the swelling under her skin, that the striped imprints were embossed. “What could have possibly done this?” Helena continued musing, her fingers drawing crosshatched trails over Myka’s bruised inner thighs.

Myka whimpered, but Helena was engrossed in her own exploration. While questioning the nature of that particular bruise, she was also questioning Myka’s motives for entering that race, questioning Myka’s need for adrenaline, for pain; questioning her own place in the life of a thrill-seeking Myka. Had Myka always had a thirst for kicks? Could she have read Myka wrong all this time? Or was it their affairs that had pushed Myka to do more dangerous things to satisfy some newly discovered heightened sense of adventure?

“Helena,” Myka gasped, thrusting her hips gently.

Helena didn’t hear her.

“Helena, please,” she begged.

“I don’t understand…” Helena whispered and looked at Myka, above her, agonised with need, flushed and wanting.

“The walls, probably,” Myka answered with urgency, hoping that some form of answer would satisfy Helena’s curiosity and she will bring her mouth to where Myka wanted it, to where she needed it, to where she missed it. “There must have been two dozen of them, and I’m not a graceful jumper,” she reached to touch Helena’s cheek with her request. “Now, please, Helena, I need you.”

Helena could not refuse Myka, even if Myka had found a new drug in adrenaline-fuelled races. So she leaned in and gently explored Myka’s centre with lips and tongue, softly and slowly excited her clit to give her lover a soothing climax that didn’t demand much of her aching muscles.

When Myka’s and Helena’s breathing evened out, Helena took her time kissing her way up Myka’s body. “I’m sorry this evening has to be so short,” she apologised between kisses.

“I’m sorry too,” Myka smiled into a kiss and tried to pull Helena to her, but Helena refused to place her weight atop an injured Myka.

“I’ve already booked the suite at the Omni for next week,” Helena spoke while peppering Myka’s neck with light kisses.

Myka smiled broadly and coaxed Helena into another passionate kiss. “I’ll see you then, I suppose,” she whispered, already planning to declutter that afternoon so she could get to that room an hour, or an hour and a half earlier.

Helena pulled back to look at Myka, some of the questions her mind raised earlier still echoing distantly. As she took in those smiling, green eyes every echo in her mind fell silent. All she could hear were her own paced breaths, and those of Myka beneath her, whose smile beamed relief and adoration, the very same sentiments that passed through Helena herself.


	18. XVII. (7 weeks previous)

Myka opened the door and was greeted with a warm and muggy room, vapour still wafting from the bathroom, carrying the scents of Helena’s evening routine. The air was spiced with the soft, soothing herbal essences of Helena’s conditioner and moisturiser, and a tinge of stinging mint from mouthwash.

Helena hadn’t been in long.

For Myka, that specific concoction of smells was Helena’s and Myka missed it. The prospect of seeing Helena _properly_ sent warmth across her belly, and the prospect of kissing, of touching Helena for the duration of an entire evening, if not a whole night (depending on how quickly they wore each other out) spread fire across her skin. She missed Helena so much that it made Myka worried as much as it made her excited, because she knew that the hunger she had for Helena was different now to the hunger she had felt for her when they first met. She knew that her hunger for Helena was better known by another name, a name she feared to speak because it might bring about the end of their glorious affair.

_None of that matters right now_ , she convinced herself. _Helena’s back and everything’s fine. It’ll all be fine._

“Hey,” Myka announced herself and walked through the suite’s living room. She took off her jacket, folded it and placed it neatly on the back of a sofa. She found Helena poring over some documents by the coffee table in the bedroom.

“Hello,” Helena looked up with a glowing smile, “May I just---“ she asked, pointing at the papers spread on the table.

“Sure,” Myka smiled back and reached her hand to the top button of her blouse, threatening to undo it.

Helena watched Myka’s fingers circling the small, plastic fastening and her own tongue reached to touch her top lip, calming an inevitable storm. “I won’t be a minute.”

“Take your time,” Myka said and waited for Helena to look back at the papers she was amending, before she undid all the buttons of her blouse, but did not further the effort of taking it off.

She watched Helena sitting on the small armchair, wrapped in the hotel’s fluffy bathrobe. Shiny, damp hair fell down her neck and rested on her back. It was tucked behind her ear on the side that faced Myka, so Myka could take in Helena’s profile, accentuated by the backdrop of her black hair, cascading down the other side of her face, a dark curtain that crisped the angle of Helena’s nose, the perfect curve of her upper lip, her full, rose-stained bottom lip and the small dimple underneath it.

Myka’s fingernails began raking the heated skin at her exposed chest lightly, without her even noticing, as her anticipation grew. Her lip curved to a lopsided smile as she started thinking up images of Helena she had catalogued in her memory over the past year, thinking up the sounds and sensations associated with those images. All the while her skin flushed a darker shade of pink, her breaths grew shorter, and her teeth dug into the inside of her bottom lip – the best way she knew to keep herself restrained, given how tightly her belly was clenching and how aroused she could feel herself grow.

With three final glides of a pen, Helena got up swiftly, collected the papers scattered across the coffee table to a single, neat pile and rested her pen across them. She tightened the belt of her bathrobe with the force of habit (after all, it was likely to be undone in a matter of seconds), and muttered to herself her task list, counting its items on the fingers of her left hand, making sure she had completed everything she had intended to, before turning her full attention to the tall, lean woman waiting for her, practically leering at her from the far corner of the room.

That woman, whose eyes and voice and mind and banter she’d missed; that woman, the memories of whose skin and touch and lips kept her satisfied (yet distressingly yearning) all those nights she spent in lush hotel suites in Paris and Berlin and Rome. That woman, whose shape and strength and poise she hadn’t properly felt for almost two months. That woman, who was standing a mere ten feet away from her, and the sight of whom made her heart beat faster and her insides clench.

She looked at that woman and felt a wave of relief first, that Myka was there, that Myka was so close and about to get closer. Then she felt a wave of desire, because she knew exactly what was going through that striking, regal woman’s mind when her fingers were fidgeting at her chest, when her cheeks were a dark pink, when her eyes were almost as dark as her own.

She sauntered over to Myka who kept her post, leaning casually against the wall. Helena leaned her body gently into hers, propped by a palm at the top of Myka’s hip.

“None of that, now,” she whispered and pulled Myka’s hand away from her chest. “You know that taking you out of your clothes is half the fun,” Helena peeled Myka’s blouse from her front, exposing her chest, the top of her breasts and her abdomen – as far as the blouse, still tucked in Myka’s trousers – allowed.

“Half?” Myka asked in mock surprise, her voice soft through short breaths.

“Don’t you get technical on me now,” Helena’s own lips curved into a smile as they ghosted Myka’s, and her hands tugged Myka’s blouse gently out of her trousers.

“Oh, I’ll get technical alright,” Myka took Helena’s lips and her hips at once, pressing Helena’s body to hers and deepening the kiss, her tongue playfully stroking Helena’s lips.

Helena moaned, wanton, and opened her mouth, inviting Myka in, wanting Myka, pure and simple.

But Myka pulled away, slipped her hands to the knotted belt on the front of the bathrobe, “I thought kissing would be at least 10 percent of the fun…” she untethered the thick fabric and the robe parted to reveal a naked sliver the length of Helena’s body underneath.

Helena looked at the curious, infuriating, tall woman, hoping she’d stop taking stock and take her, instead. “Myka,” she breathed.

Myka took a sharp breath, not having been quite ready for Helena to be naked, but she _was_ , and _Good God_ , she missed that skin, those breasts. So she reached for those breasts, cool fingers, cool palms rounding warm flesh. Helena’s nipples hardened the instant Myka touched her, and Myka’s grin turned feral. “ _This_ must be 15 percent, then,” she husked.

“Myka,” Helena panted breathlessly, eyes falling shut, body falling into the hands at her breasts.

“And _this_ ,” Myka swept her hands around and brought fingers and thumbs to wrap tight nipples in a light pinch. “This,” she drawled as she pulled, lightly at first, and then harder and harder, until Helena – forehead pressed to Myka’s chest – moaned again, a moan bordering on the pornographic. “ _This_ is surely 15 percent more,” she chuckled evilly under her own breath, her own skin on fire, her own centre hot and throbbing. She knew her own game might backfire if she didn’t reach her endgame soon.

“Myka,” Helena’s voice broke and she fumbled uselessly with her lover’s trousers as Myka tweaked her nipples.

“We’re already at 40 percent so I can’t really see how _this_ would be _half_ the fun,” her hands left Helena at once, without warning, in favour of punctuating the word ‘this’ with the swift, unceremonious removal of her own blouse and bra, then the quick unfastening of her trousers. She returned her hands to Helena’s waist, one hand reaching down to pull Helena’s leg around her, the other slipping down her belly and between her legs, “and I haven’t even touched you _here_ yet,” just in time to emphasise ‘here’ with sliding two fingers along her, from clit to entrance and back again.

Helena’s head fell back and her mouth fell open, calling Myka’s name again, her hips bucking, her centre demanding more of Myka’s hand.

Myka returned a moan and leaned over to take the juncture of Helena’s neck and shoulder in her mouth, to kiss and nip and lick it; all the while Helena moved more frantically against her and Myka didn’t quite give Helena all she wanted.

“I haven’t done _this_ yet,” Myka dipped Helena further so she could reach her breast with her mouth, wrapping it hotly with keen lips and swirling her tongue around supple flesh and an eager nipple.

Helena’s body tensed and she choked Myka’s name again, broken, as she staggered at the edge of orgasm.

Myka pulled Helena up to her and wrapped her arms around her. She held her naked lover to her naked chest, felt her body trembling lightly, then coaxed her into a kiss.

This wasn’t quite the release Helena had anticipated, and yet… It left her breathless. Myka managed to surprise her _yet again_.

She realised Myka stopped on purpose to hold her, to kiss her, even though she could feel Myka’s need. Helena could feel Myka’s warmth and Myka’s muscles, how they tremored subtly under flushed skin, and she missed those so much. But the way Myka had dominated her, the way she kissed her – Helena missed those too. She reminded herself that time had no meaning for them that night, so she returned Myka’s embrace, held her to her as they kissed.

Myka took a breath between lips trapping lips. “Those two must be…” she pushed her bottom lip out, mock calculating, “20 and 25 percent, respectively?” referring to kissing Helena’s body and breast play with her mouth.

Helena’s eyes narrowed with an outraged glare up at Myka who was still pretending to think. Helena reached both her hands to the back of Myka’s neck and pulled her to her again, to sink her teeth into Myka’s bottom lip, which was still protruding dangerously.

Myka tightened her grip on Helena, fearing she might lose her balance, but Helena used the momentum to spin them around and throw Myka on the bed. Myka tried to push herself up, but Helena’s hand was flat on her sternum, pushing her down.

Helena straddled her midriff and grabbed Myka’s hands that came creeping up her front, like ivy. “None of that, now, either,” she spoke determinedly and pushed Myka’s arms over her head, bearing down on her lover, which ground her wet centre against Myka’s exposed belly.

Myka gasped at the feel of Helena, so aroused and hot and wet against her abdomen, and she couldn’t help the lustful moan that escaped her, or the sharp bucking of her hips, or her head falling back, or the intense tug in her core.  

“Don’t you dare,” Helena commanded and pulled Myka’s chin down so she could look into her eyes. “Don’t you dare come without me touching you,” she hissed with anger, with jealousy, to her trapped lover beneath her. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed touching you,” Helena continued and pushed into the body underneath hers, and it rose to meet her, skin clinging to skin. “You cannot---“ Helena started, but the relief and the desire she was washed with a few minutes ago rose within her again, and Myka was looking up at her, wanting, submitting.

Myka shook her head lightly, gazing adoringly at the exquisite woman above her with whom she hadn’t felt this way for such a long time. Too long. She could see the earnestness in those deep, brown eyes. “I won’t,” she whispered, “I’m not…” Myka craned her neck to kiss Helena, to ease her mind, assuage her need, temper her urgency just a little bit, because Myka needed Helena to touch her. Myka missed Helena’s touch just as much as Helena missed touching her. The previous week had been nothing but a tease for Myka, a short and not-quite-satisfying glimpse of what she wanted from Helena but didn’t receive due to injuries and time constraints. Neither of these mattered now, though.

Myka twisted her wrists free from Helena’s grip and slipped her hands up Helena’s thighs on either side of her. “Come with me,” Myka purred and gave one of Helena’s thighs a squeeze and a nudge to get Helena to stretch herself atop Myka, move one of her legs between her own.

Helena complied and reached her fingers into the open gap in Myka’s trousers, past her underwear, and in, quickly, right where and how Myka needed her, fingers curled deep inside her and a thumb pressing her clit.

Myka managed to keep enough wits about her to drag her hand up Helena’ thigh and dive back to where it was a few minutes ago, continuing those long strokes between her folds and occasionally reaching inside.

It took their individual paces a few moments to align, for their gasps to keep time, for their moans to match and their cries to echo. It took them a few moments more to abate their want, restrain their passion and revel in the sensations they were inspiring in one another. They took a few moments more to savour the closeness they missed, enjoy the time they had.

Then Helena braced herself against Myka’s shoulder, digging her fingers into muscle, pushing against her lover to stave off her climax for just a moment longer. Myka yelped as Helena’s grip tightened, as her fingernails broke soft skin. It was a primal sound that Helena echoed with a groan and a hard thrust into Myka’s hand. And with that, all tethers that kept their fervour at bay were broken, and their exchange grew rougher, faster and messier.

They came, milliseconds apart, heavy breaths and pulses pounding. When Myka opened her eyes, Helena was looking at her with something that looked _different_ to how Helena had always looked at her in the past. And that difference felt to Myka a lot like the word she could not bring herself to call her hunger.

Her relief and desire sated for now, Helena leaned down to kiss Myka with the same meaning that found its way to their kisses before she went away. Helena felt blessed and cursed with her admission of her love for Myka, given the uncertain path she now walked. But when she kissed Myka Helena felt her love was complemented by a sense of peace, being reunited with a lover that always gave her exactly what she needed, even when she didn’t know it herself.

Myka responded with equal meaning. Having been away from Helena, having had her and then not, changed the nature of Myka’s gratitude. When they first started seeing each other, Myka was grateful for what Helena had given her. Then, she appreciated the change Helena had nurtured in her, and how Helena answered all her needs from an extramarital lover. That night, for the first time, Myka was grateful for simply having Helena in her life.

As she answered Helena’s kiss, as she slowly negotiated more of that kiss to herself so she could give back to Helena what Helena was granting her in abundance every time a lip was snared by teeth, every time tongue grazed another, Myka knew that the sort of gratitude she was feeling that moment, the one she had felt over the past few weeks, wasn’t really gratitude at all. It was that pesky sentiment that she knew would bring a whole other meaning to what she had with Helena, one of which was an ending. It was an ending Myka feared having experienced life without Helena again, it was an ending that concerned her deeply.

Myka’s own recognition of the emotion-that-shall-not-be-named rang distantly with guilt, with a faraway choir of ‘ _I told you so_ ’s in Claudia’s melodious tones, with a faded visage of Irene Frederic’s arched brow, above her purple, 50s glasses. Myka had, after all, started all this believing that sex and physical intimacy could be had without emotional attachment. Without love. She also came to challenge that with Irene, and agreed a new paradigm: sex with emotion, but without expectations, without commitment. But that idea challenged her own beliefs about what love was. What was love if not for the need to be loved in return, consistently, ongoingly? What was love for, if not for committing it to another?

She recalled Helena’s descriptions of the women who had become too intense, and she wondered if her hunger for Helena (or that emotion she was still reluctant to name) were the same as the intensity in Helena’s stories. She wondered if her gratitude – as it used to be and what it had transformed to – was that intensity. She wondered if Helena felt those – the hunger, the gratitude, the love – the way she did, because the way Helena was kissing her sure felt like it, which left Myka confused about Helena’s investment in their relationship. So she chose to focus on the need, her pure physical demand for Helena.

Until Helena, Myka firmly believed that lust was just a part of her that needed to be filled, like a gas tank. And seeing as her marriage had stopped doing that half a decade ago, she realised that she needed to find a way to refuel. She thought Helena believed that as well, based on conversations they had had, based on Helena’s rules. But it increasingly felt to Myka, as kisses and touches were traded that night, that lust had evolved in both of them, into some kind of love, apparently. _That’s rich_ , she though, _love out of lust_.

And in that epiphany Myka found the kill switch to her cognition. In linking her love to her lust, she could convince herself that she was simply refuelling, topping up the empty tank, and she didn’t need Helena’s masterful touch to switch off the guilt that overran every fibre of her being, every nerve ending, every receptor. It was as if there was a new line of code she could access, code that allowed her to feel contentment and satisfaction and peace, even if those were tinted with a noticeable tinge of sadness and uncertainty because she knew that Helena was not a fan of her lovers falling for her. But this new code let her enjoy the lust from which her love was born. She chose to enjoy the pain that squeezed at her heart (a bit like she enjoyed it when Helena dug her nails into her shoulder a few minutes previous), and let the remaining sensations overcome her.

Helena, for her part, was kissing Myka as though kissing alleviated the burden of her love. Since she confessed to herself, since she confessed it to William in Rome, Helena was weighed down by her conscience. For the first time since entering her agreement with her husband, Helena had felt that their future together might be in jeopardy, a thought she did not care to entertain. Remediating that meant letting go of Myka, a thought she did not care to entertain either. The more this troubled her the more entrenched she had become, unwilling to let go of either, a fact that in itself troubled Helena, who considered herself to be pragmatic, innovative and forward thinking. It was not like her to get stuck and not be able to think of other solutions, pragmatic ones, even if temporary – _anything_ that would offer her alternatives to the unacceptable extreme possibilities with which she was presented. Not even in her worst nightmare had Helena Wells ever imagined telling herself that she could neither eat the cake nor have it.

But, _oh_ , Myka’s tongue tickled her upper lip, and Myka’s teeth soon gave chase, and then her soft lips again… All the while Myka’s breasts pressed against her own and Myka’s arms cradled her body, holding it placed perfectly so rocking was just… _Oh_ … And she loved that Myka was such a damned good lover.

Helena knew all too well that love spoiled an affair the way cracked cork spoiled red wine, and she didn’t want that to happen to her affair with Myka. Even beyond the emotion, Myka had become Helena’s perfect lover, with her smouldering desire, with her openness and willingness to try new things, with her ability to dominate and be dominated without facade or pretence. How free she’d become with her mind and her body, as she was with Helena’s.

Helena smiled sweetly, recalling when she told William about Myka. How he crowned her then a perfect love for Helena, and how quickly Helena was to dismiss him. She recalled the rest of that conversation, the conclusion that so long as the expectation in the relationship was that love was refunded immediately and in full, the relationship was likely to be doomed. And she knew that the only way to disarm an expectation from its devastating power was to turn it to an explicit demand. And to do that, she and Myka needed to discuss and agree it. So it was up to her to make it work. It was up to her _and_ Myka.

All that could wait, now that she was with her lover. She was kissing Myka and Myka was kissing her back, and hands were pressing against warm, soft skin, and fingers were tangling in hair, brushing it away from flushed cheeks, and the familiarity and comfort in this act overwhelmed Helena’s need to discuss the status quo and negotiate a future one.

Being with Myka, giving herself to Myka the way that she did, and Myka accepting her without question, Myka _reciprocating_ without question made Helena feel lighter. The way Myka responded to her, the way she returned all Helena gave her, and more, made it seem that consequences, plans and confessions could all wait until the flow of kisses ebbed and the tide of caresses settled.

Helena drew her kisses longer, answering Myka’s deep kisses, until kisses weren’t enough anymore. So she dragged her lips from Myka’s and down her cheek to her neck and her chest where bruises from her silly race were fading into her skin in a spectacular sunset of browns, yellows and greens.

She fluttered her lips and her fingertips across the dissolving stain on Myka’s chest, admiring the beauty of the colours and – at the same time – hating how they marred such perfect skin, such a perfect body. “You are never allowed to do that to my favourite plaything,” she mused between fleeting touches of lips and tongue.

Myka’s eyes shot open. Helena’s words felt like rude awakening from a particularly pleasant dream. Her heart squeezed a bit more tightly as she processed those words, their possible meaning. While it felt incredibly risky to start _that_ conversation at _that_ moment, Myka knew from the time she had spent with Helena, that risks pay off more often than not. “Is that what I am?” she asked, only half intending the question to be bantering. “A plaything?”

Helena propped her head up and looked into Myka’s eyes, which she regretted immediately because _those eyes_ , and _that smile_ , and _that openness_ , and _that playfulness_ , and _that honesty_ , she counted Myka’s virtues as her heart and lungs forgot their primary functions and all she wanted to do was kiss Myka and say ‘ _no, you silly woman, I love you_ ’.

Instead she took a deep breath and licked her lips. “Your body is, by far, my favourite plaything,” she grinned mischievously to mask the emotional undercurrent, while she thought up ways she could broach the subject, “if your body existed entirely separately to you,” she leaned forward and brought her lips close to Myka’s cheek, “it,” she enunciated, “would have been a plaything,” she ran her lips across Myka’s jawline, nipping at its juncture with her neck.

Myka breathed softly, trying to convince her heart to stop squeezing so damn tightly in her chest, her brain insisting that _my body doesn’t exist separately to me_. “Is this a dirty compliment or a backhanded one?” she husked, closed her eyes and submitted to Helena the Temptress, submitted to having her bold attempt of emotional exploration be diverted to sex. “Keep digging, Helena,” Myka pulled Helena to her, admitting to herself she was choosing a side of cowardice with her main of missing Helena.

“I’d rather not,” Helena said softly as she nipped her way to the hollow behind Myka’s ear and back again, to the edge of her lips, where she placed a lingering, chaste kiss.

“I missed you, you know,” Myka’s courage tipped its hat in defeat. She knew fondness as consequence of absence was the least dangerous emotion to reveal, and come of it what may.

“God, I missed you,” Helena whispered into Myka’s lips, all too quickly in relief, finally able to speak what she felt.

There was an awkward silence for a handful of seconds before Myka brought her hand up Helena’s back, to secure her lover to her in an embrace. Helena curled into Myka, head on her chest, front against Myka’s side, leg draped across her lover’s.

For a while, fingertips on exposed skin and a drizzle of kisses that fell where lips happened to be was all they exchanged.

“Was it worth it, then?” Myka asked with devilish confidence, her fingers engaged in a hypnotising dance in Helena’s hair.

Helena heard the cockiness in Myka’s question and returned an equally audacious answer. “Are you asking me if a trip to Europe that has effectively secured the financial wellbeing of my business interests for the foreseeable future was worth not seeing you for a month?” She held her head up to see Myka’s response and cocked a vain eyebrow.

“Well, when you put it---”

“Almost,” Helena interrupted Myka’s self-deprecating afterthought with heart-breaking softness.

Myka scrunched her face before releasing a short laugh.

“What?” Helena was genuinely offended.

Myka closed her eyes and shook her head lightly, thinking Helena would do or say _something_ to dispel the triteness of her own response. When she opened her eyes Helena was still poised above her, hurt. So Myka sat up and tied her hair back and Helena sat up facing her. “You mocked me once for being a terrible flirt. For being banal,” she looked at Helena and contemplated how big a risk she was willing to take, what payoff was she standing to gain versus what was she standing to lose. “Well, that was banal,” she finished softly with a light shrug.

“That was… romantic,” Helena argued after a short pause.

Myka was surprised and taken aback by Helena’s response. _Since when do we do romance and since when does Helena?_ she thought and her heart squeezed again. _Love out of lust_ , she chanted to herself to keep herself on track, _love out of lust_. “Was it honest?”

“It was.”

Myka smiled brightly. “Then that's all that matters,” she fell back to the pillows behind her and closed her eyes, satisfied with the payoff.

“You are brutal with your honesty, you know,” Helena bit her lip, angry and turned on equally by Myka’s apparent confidence.

“I’ve always been told it’s one of my winning traits,” Myka tried to sound self-assured with such a blatant lie. She knew damn well that every person who crossed her path found it either refreshing, or crass. Myka’s honesty was as divisive as Marmite.

Helena smiled a devilish smile of her own, spotting the fib as it sailed by so casually. “I bet it alienates as many people as it wins,” she called Myka’s bluff and steered the conversation back to the safe shores of mutual banter.

Myka opened her eyes with a tiny crack of a glare at Helena, arrogant, confident Helena. _Of course_ _she’d know I’m lying_. She couldn’t be angry with Helena for long. She couldn’t even pretend to be angry with her for long. It wasn’t so much that Myka was so ready to forgive Helena her hubris and vanity, but more the fact that they were equals. Their capabilities and capacities matched that of the other, which meant they couldn’t pull any bullshit between them. And for Myka – who always needed to downplay her intellect and emotion and wit – be it around colleagues or her own wife – it was _so wonderful_ to have had an equal.

“So long as I’m brutal, then,” Myka slipped down the pillows, closer to her lover. “What was it like with William? Being with him this whole time?”

Helena chortled. “We shared some wonderful meals and museums and concerts. But a month together is probably the most we could suffer in each other’s presence,” Helena sighed the honest answer. “It is easier, though, when we go together, given that both our input and signatures are required for everything. Going separately would have been…” Helena trailed off, bored of explaining this.

“Counterproductive,” Myka summarised and brushed Helena’s waist, inviting her to come back to her.

“Exactly,” Helena accepted and curled back into Myka, head resting on her chest again. “And much longer, too,” she added with a whisper, and they both huffed a quiet laugh, admitting without saying that more time apart was counterproductive for them as well.

Myka became more and more aware of how they were positioned, of what they were doing. Helena was cocooned against – on top of – Myka. They were holding each other, sleepily, heavily. Helena was tracing the shapes of the bruises on Myka’s chest and abdomen; Myka was tickling the back of Helena’s neck.

They’d shared similar moments in the afterglow, in between, but it never like _this_. _This_ felt soft and caring and slow; It wasn’t arousing or exciting or sexy in any way. _This_ felt like it was inducing the very opposite of what they usually did in hotel rooms.

_This is cuddling_ , Myka concluded to herself, _we never cuddle_ , she determined. _This is new. Just like romance_.

Helena sensed a change in Myka’s breathing pattern and muscle tone. _She must have noticed it too_ , Helena thought, referring to the familiarity in their position contrasted with the incidental weight of emotion. So while their touch was peaceful, their silence was anything but.

Helena sighed silently, blinked her eyes open and forced her lips to shape five words she had been dreading to speak. “Myka,” she took a breath. “We need to talk.”

Myka clenched her teeth and forced a breath out silently, calming herself, all the while preparing arguments and counter arguments in her head while her stomach raged with anger, with longing, with sadness, with relief, with gratitude, with hunger, with love. “I guess we do,” was all she said, even though she feared the contents and premise of the conversation they were about to begin.

Helena lifted herself from Myka and pulled the sheet from the bed to cover herself. Myka watched her as she diligently undid the covers, watched how Helena’s muscles in her arms and back and abdomen tensed and flexed to force the sheets from their orderly, tightly-packed nest at the foot of the bed.

Myka also noted that this was the first time Helena had ever covered herself up in front of her, so she looked away to give Helena privacy. After a few seconds of feeling too awkward where she sat, she leaned over to help Helena in releasing the other side of the sheet.

Helena felt grateful for Myka’s help, because the sheet – as flimsy a shield as it was – was the only thing to protect her from the potential harsh words Myka might well be dealing her.

Myka took the other side of the sheet to her chest, not knowing what to expect, and arranged herself to mirror Helena: leaning a shoulder against the headboard so they were still facing each other.

Helena’s heart was thumping in her chest as her mind recalled all the conversations she had with William about love, about Myka, about their marriage. She recalled all the wonderful things William had shared with her, his observations, his truth. She reminded herself of pieces of their conversations that inspired her epiphanies, those made most sense to her, just in case she needed them later. She then tucked the sheet under her arms and pushed her hair back, looking at Myka looking back at her patiently, smiling a soft, tentative smile.

“I never meant for this to happen,” Helena started. “Not only did I never mean for this to happen, this has also never happened before,” she smiled back at Myka, and Myka noticed the slight blush, the coyness Helena was trying so hard to mask, and failing catastrophically. “So for all the ease and casualness with which I approached our time together previously, this conversation, I’m afraid, is deeply uncomfortable for me.”

Myka nodded, uncertainty solidifying within her veins like concrete, her mind and stomach churning with emotions and scenarios and possibilities and questions and answers.

Helena looked down and took a steadying breath. She had not had a conversation like this since she was a teenager, nineteen, to be exact, in bed with William when she was so in love she could barely breathe. Now, in her early forties, with years of pragmatism and cynicism under her belt, she found herself short of breath once more. Perhaps it was the irrefutable knowledge that her oncoming declaration would not end in a straightforward happy-ever-after.

This knowledge was truth not only because, unlike her nineteen-year-old self, Helena didn’t believe happy-ever-after existed anymore, but also because she had no idea what to expect her relationship with Myka to become in the wake of her declaration.

“I’m afraid…” Helena spoke softly and looked at Myka, then stopped. She weighed her options, reminded herself of William’s rousing pep talk about how brave she was to pursue happiness in a way he never could. _Fortune favours the brave_ , she braced herself, because that particular figure of speech (commonplace as it may be) had followed through for Helena in the past. Myka was living proof of that.

Myka bit down on the inside of her cheek to silence the thoughts, silence the concerns. None of them were helpful. To her, the situation they were in invoked the emptiness she had felt the night Giselle confronted her about her crabbiness, the pain of having someone so close to her wholly misinterpret her frame of mind, because she feared how Helena might interpret hers.

“I’m afraid I’ve grown very fond of you, Myka,” Helena strained the words out of her mouth, knowing she was skirting the danger zone, not quite committing to the emotion, not fully committing to the honesty that an explicit negotiation required. She raised her gaze to the woman in front of her, who still looked at her, with her kind smile and her honest eyes.

Looking at her, so close, so beautiful, Helena found within her the strength to start the conversation in earnest. So without preamble, without further introductory statements, she spoke the words she had dreaded to speak aloud for so long, plain and simple. “I love you.”

Myka stopped breathing for a moment. Her body and mind fell still. Even though she knew that she was no longer a casual fuck for Helena – she had known this for a while now – she hadn’t really expected _this_. She had presumed Helena had feelings for her on some level, but not quite _these_.

And still, hearing those words spoken aloud, where only the two of them were present, was scary because these words harboured Helena’s detested intensity. These words underpinned the hunger that Helena would eventually get bored with. And all these heralded the end of her time with Helena, so Myka thought.

Never in Myka’s life, has love tasted so bitter.

She looked down, away from Helena’s eyes, those dark orbs that radiated acceptance and solace and desire and want, because she would rather have her memory recall those eyes when they were playful and passionate and lustful and angry with her for getting one up on Helena and pleased and sated and content. She didn’t want to have an image of them like this – uncertain and anxious.

Silence weighed heavily on them again. Helena was waiting for Myka to respond; Myka was attempting to jumpstart her cognition so that she can process Helena’s words and logically assess her options. But Myka’s cognition refused to play along.

“Would it matter if I told you I loved you too?” Myka looked up again truly lost as to what were to happen next. For Myka, who for most of her adult life could predict with terrifying accuracy how conversations and events would unfold, this conversation felt like a blind stumble across a crowded, dark room.

The sight of Myka, confused and serious, broke Helena’s heart. “Do you?” Helena called on Myka’s brutal honesty from earlier.

Myka closed her eyes and asked herself whether she loved Helena and the warmth that spread through her broke the rigid walls of doubt that encased her and tugged the corners of her lips up to a warm smile, a smile that warmed her chest and cheeks, that beamed through her eyes. She looked back at Helena and nodded, hoping Helena could see that she did.

“Then of course it matters,” Helena answered as Myka’s smile reverberated in her and she leaned to hold Myka’s hand, which laid limp between them.

“What now, then?” Myka asked with a hint of concern, because while the lifted weight of the admission made it easier to breathe again, it made the air between them heavy.

“Renegotiate the terms of our involvement, I suppose,” Helena said, Myka’s concern mirrored in her voice. “If you were interested,” she added, giving Myka an out.

Myka’s smile broadened, exposing her teeth until she laughed, a restrained, but relieved laugh. The notion that they renegotiate would have sounded cold to anyone who didn’t know Helena, who didn’t know what the term in that context meant to her. Myka couldn’t possibly miss the irony that Helena was proposing they used the very tool she had used to save her marriage, only they were saving _their affair_. Perhaps it wasn’t irony at all, perhaps it was flattery. Perhaps it was love.

Helena wasn’t sure what to make of Myka’s response initially, but her body language gave her away – Myka fell relaxed against the headboard, and reached her other hand to cover Helena’s, which was still covering her own, fingers grazing the back of her hand playfully.

“I’m interested,” Myka said, and tightened her lips with another smile. She no longer minded if her intensity showed. She no longer cared about her hunger. Renegotiation would mean they each bring what they feel to the table, so they could agree anew what was and wasn’t acceptable.

“Okay,” Helena breathed more easily as well, negotiating the relationship felt like semi-familiar territory. She’d done it a handful of times with William in the past. It was only William, though, a counterpart she knew very well. She knew what made him tick, what didn’t. She had years’-worth of evidence of what did and didn’t work for her, for him, for the both of them as a couple. With Myka, there were just about eleven months’ worth: five of which were nothing _but_ sex, five were _predominantly_ sex and one without Myka at all. She had very little to go on.

Myka was intrigued by the concept of renegotiating relationships. She had been keen to renegotiate with Giselle for a long time, given Giselle had admitted during couple’s counselling to feeling unable to have a candid conversation about what she really wanted from Myka.

Facing a peer, however, presented Myka with the interesting intellectual endeavour a renegotiation ought to be, albeit with an added emotional twist. Or at least that’s what she tried to tell herself so as not be distracted by the fact she was still mostly naked and Helena was still completely naked under the sheet onto which they were both holding, and the outcomes of this negotiation would dictate how and when or whether, even, she would be naked with Helena again.

“Let’s start with the basics,” Helena straightened, pressing the sheet to her chest. “As with any negotiation, let’s first talk through our demands.”

Myka laughed nervously at that. “I’m not holding you hostage or anything,” she made light of the question.

“I realise that, darling, but the whole point of this part of the conversation is to explore what we want from each other.”

“Sorry,” she looked down, biting on her lips for having used the forbidden word. She started thinking about what she wanted from Helena, what was it about their affair that worked. What came up first was the fact that the premise of their exchanges allowed either of them to take from the other, and for the other to exert veto rights if they didn’t like what was going on, as and when it was happening (and Myka could only think of a single instance where veto was cast, but wondered whether, under the rules of pain play, using the safe word was considered veto). Myka’s first demand, then, was that they continue to live by the rule of ‘it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission’ when they were together.

But Myka’s decorum deemed it too vulgar for a first demand so she cast a wider net across her memories, through sessions she had had with Irene, through conversations she had with Pete and Claudia and Giselle and couple’s therapists about what it was she wanted. “What do I want…” she mused.

Helena smiled patiently.

A smile crept to Myka’s lips. There was no way around it. Sex was fundamental to their relationship, so she simply could not skirt around the topic. What Myka wanted from Helena a year on was exactly what she wanted from her when they first started seeing each other: enticing conversations in between free, evolving, exceptional sex.

She recalled that first, nervous night in that motel on the I95. How when Helena asked her then what she wanted, and her mind was racing with her wish list of traits for the ideal lover and her heart was aching with guilt and with want to have something she hadn’t had in years.

Back then she answered the question with a kiss.

But these days… There was no need for a wish list for a hypothetical lover anymore. That lover was very much real, and very much ideal. Not only did Helena give Myka everything she had wished for previously, but she kept surprising her with things that Myka never even knew she wanted.

What Myka wanted _now_ was for it to not stop. She wanted it to continue, even though she knew that it wouldn’t stay the same, because it had already changed so much since it first began.

What Myka wanted was for their affair to continue. She wanted it to continue evolving. “I have what I want,” she wound up saying. “I want to continue having what we have. What do you want?”

Helena looked at Myka suspiciously. She knew Myka well enough to know that a long pause meant that there was a lot more behind Myka’s answer than what Myka chose to articulate. For the second time, Helena chose to give Myka the benefit of the doubt due to her status of a novice. After all, Helena was more experienced than Myka in these types of negotiations.

So she took a breath in preparation for being precise and explicit with Myka about what she wanted. “I want to continue having what we are having as well,” she started, deliberately echoing Myka’s sentiment and words, “which I’m assuming is a vague reference to the physical aspect of our relationship,” she added clarity.

Myka humphed, with a slow nod.

“I want to continue seeing you at least once a week. I want us to continue spending a night together once a month. I want us to find a regular Tuesday lunchtime spot to spend in Beacon Hill every two or three weeks,” Helena asserted specifics, looking Myka in the eye.

Myka was taken aback slightly by Helena’s demands, mostly because they came across like demands in a custody hearing. She realised now that she misunderstood the task, “Okay,” Myka picked up the thread, “I want us to continue being liberal with each other,” she said, stumbling on her words a bit, but then decided to throw caution to the wind. “One of the things that really works for me is the fact that neither of us is afraid to take or to give. And that neither of us is afraid to stop the other if something’s not right,” she ended her demand with a nod.

Helena’s smile broadened. Myka was getting the hang of it. “Good,” she congratulated her negotiation partner for a demand well set. “I’m quite happy to comply with that. What works for me is that we have no fixed roles. We both initiate and organise, we interchange dominance and submission. I would like to keep this practice.”

“Okay,” Myka nodded affirmatively, “that works for me too”.

“Excellent,” Helena returned a nod.

They looked at each other for a moment, waiting to see if the other would address the elephant in the room.

“So where does love fit into all this?” Myka didn’t take long to point it out.

Helena turned thoughtful, courage suddenly escaping her, because admitting to Myka she had loved her was hard enough. Admitting to Myka she didn’t know how to fit love into their relationship had no suitable adjective to appropriately ascribe the difficulty of it, because Myka was the only other person she had ever loved bar her husband. She honestly did not know how their love for each other would change their relationship, if at all.

“Here’s my take on this,” Myka mumbled then cleared her throat. “When we started seeing each other I was desperate.” She chuckled uncomfortably. “I wanted to be desired so badly I was convinced that you and I could have sex and enjoy sex without there being attachment, without it meaning we were in love.”

“And you were wrong?” Helena enquired.

“I think I was,” Myka couldn’t believe she was admitting this so readily. She was so rarely wrong. “But it’s probably because of something that you brought to the mix,” she looked at Helena and her smile broadened slightly. “Had it been someone else, I could have possibly still been correct.”

Helena returned a nervous smile. She found it funny Myka was so reluctant to be wholly wrong. She was also jealous at the suggestion that Myka might be fucking someone else, even though she knew she wasn’t. She had no evidence for the assumption, but she just knew. It still didn’t stop her from feeling a stab of jealousy at the very thought of it.

“The more I got to know you,” Myka accounted her evolving experience of Helena in her mind: bored elitist, owner of Art and Literary publications, in an open marriage, had male and female lovers, liberal on the philosophy, economy and political fronts, arrogant and outspoken, fearless with her body and passion, fearless with her lovers’ bodies as well. Then her mind recalled images, sounds, sensations of that freedom and Myka bit her lower lip seductively. “What I wanted was _you_ , you know,” Myka’s smile dissolved. Her eyes were brutally honest again.

Helena knew. Just like she knew Myka wasn’t sleeping with anyone else.

“I didn’t want _someone_ to touch me, I didn’t want just _anyone_ to touch me,” Myka’s eyes were fierce with her words. “I wanted _you_ to touch me,” she looked at Helena, her lover whom she’d missed so badly the past five weeks. “You,” she whispered with the remains of a breath.

Helena knew damn well. She nodded in small, sharp nods. “In the beginning, I thought it was because it had been a while since I had a lover, let alone a woman. I thought I had forgotten how exciting it was to be with a woman and that was why the way you touched me felt so exciting, so new,” she was intent to continue. “But it wasn’t that at all. It was who you are, Myka, the way you _are_. How determined you are to experience, how committed you are to experience. How open you are with your want and desire. And at the same time, you are so respectful of my needs, of my space. How could I not fall for someone who is so brave and so vulnerable at the same time?” Her expression softened and her hand between Myka’s clutched her lover’s gently. “I never intended for this to happen, Myka. I never thought it probable,” the distinction between ‘possible’ and ‘probable’ was easy to make when it came to Myka. Loving her was not just possible, it was a reality. “Mostly because I have only felt this way about one of my lovers, --”

It was Myka’s turn to be stung by jealousy.

“--and I married him,” Helena finished.

Myka sighed and closed her eyes, knowing that being jealous of William was of absolutely no use.

She also realised she was correct - it wasn’t ironic at all that Helena chose to renegotiate their relationship, their affair. It wasn’t flattery, either. It was love. She looked back at her lover, at her love, across the bed from her. “So what do we do with all this? It’s not like we’re going to get married,” she taunted, voice low.

“No,” Helena concurred. “I no longer rank the institution of marriage as highly as I used to. What I would like to do is continue spending time with you,” Helena had come full circle, back to the negotiation, “continue seeing you at least once a week, and one night every month. Continue our dynamic of no fixed roles. Continue taking and giving pleasure, continue to play with our preferences,” she summarised their agreed demands so far.

Myka agreed with a sharp nod, that lead to a thoughtful silence. “All this business about love,” she mused aloud, almost petulantly, “does it have to change anything?”

Helena cocked a questioning eyebrow at the philosophical turn the conversation had taken. “It changes things, I think, because the declaration of love is culturally encumbered by so many implicit expectations.”

Myka’s smile brightened again. _Damn Helena and her phrasing_ , and damn herself for still getting wet because of it. She nodded sombrely, reminding herself that they were having a serious conversation, on which she should really focus. “So…” Myka played with Helena’s statement in her mind. “Having agreed what we do, maybe we should agree what we don’t,” she pondered as she spoke.

“How do you mean?” Helena asked, unsure of where Myka was going.

“Let’s talk through the expectations by which we are culturally encumbered,” Myka spoke Helenish back to her.

Helena felt a flutter in her stomach, a delicious mix of desire and annoyance. Myka’s intellect, banter and level of engagement were such a turn on. A spark came back to her eyes, a spark which Myka noticed.

“Expectations of settling,” Myka added after a small cough, wearing a serious face, reminding herself and Helena they weren’t finished yet.

“Expectations of reciprocity,” Helena contributed.

“Acceptance.”

“Fidelity.”

“That there is only _one_ love in our lives,” Myka’s playfulness left her voice, because for all her arguments with Claudia and all the times she thought about this and talked this through with Irene, Myka’s love of Helena did place Helena in a unique place. There was no other in Myka’s life whom she loved the same way she did Helena. Myka still loved her wife, even though that love was different to how she had loved her when they first met, or after they were together for 4 or 5 years. Myka loved her wife and she loved her sister and she loved Claudia and Pete – she loved them all the same, but differently.

And yet, not a moment ago, Myka was jealous at the notion that Helena loved someone else. This was, perhaps, the point that Myka always found so difficult to explain, how it was possible that a person could love more than one person. She, herself, didn’t believe it when she was younger. She understood the logic of it, but she didn’t understand it in the visceral way that an integral truth feels. She did since Helena, though. And she knew that whenever Claudia got upset with her, it was because she didn’t understand Myka’s perspective on this aspect of love.

“A unique, singular attachment,” Helena renamed the sentiment, recalling her own jealousy whenever she wondered whether Myka’s wife was touching her, whether anyone else was touching her, which turned the spark in her eye to a flame.

Myka looked at Helena, trying to read her. She looked as though something was bubbling uncomfortably underneath her cool exterior. “So which of these culturally-set expectations do we turn to demands?” Myka asked quietly.

Helena smiled mischievously. _Only Myka_ , she thought, _not Wolly, not even Arthur. Only Myka would challenge me so readily_. And it was here she found herself at odds with herself again, wanting to eat the cake and have it, but being allowed neither. How could she expect Myka to be faithful to her, assuming that she was Myka’s unique, singular attachment, when they were both still married?

Myka found herself in a similar illogical loop. It pissed her off, because this was the result of damn TV, and damn movies, and damn Judy Blume novels, and damn advertising, and damn religion – all of which felt like _damn_ propaganda for an arbitrary concept that had conflicting scientific evidence as to its merits. Romcoms and popular music and even standard wedding vows – they all bank on this unfounded notion that every person is only allowed to love one person at any given time.

_Maybe_ , Myka thought, _maybe that’s what we need to renegotiate_. They needed to agree what love was to them, what _their love_ was, and how it was different to the love in the books and the songs and the movies.

“Here’s a demand, then,” Myka straightened, her hands still sandwiching Helena’s, and with no hands holding the sheet to her chest, it slipped to reveal more of it. “This,” she gestured at the space between Helena and her with her free hand, “goes on so long as it’s good for each of us. The minute it stops, we renegotiate.” Pause. “ _This_ ,” Myka emphasised the gesture, “goes on so long as we continue to tick each other’s boxes or float each other’s boats or whatever.”

Helena smiled fondly at Myka’s overuse of colloquialisms that painted a surreal picture of a boats made out of clipboards. She also marvelled at how effectively Myka was constructing an argument that would bring an end to her conundrum. “So reciprocity, acceptance and openness,” Helena counted them on her fingers, “but no settling or unique, singular attachment?”

“A _different_ unique, singular attachment,” Myka quirked a brow, because she assumed Helena didn’t relish the thought of her fucking someone else any more than she did Helena. “There is an ‘us’ because we are here, and we are invested in each other beyond the sex, right?”

Helena nodded her agreement.

“But there is no ‘us’ in a way that makes us liable to one another, where we have these unspoken sentimental expectations…” Myka paused, to let her logic catch up with her. “Like, we don’t expect the other to read our mind because we assume they know us,” she said. “If either of us wants something, she asks for it.”

“Or takes it,” Helena added with a smirk.

“Or takes it,” Myka returned a smile. “Or, we don’t expect of each other to remember birthdays or anniversaries or social calendars,” she extrapolated on the bugbears of all loving relationships, not just those with their respective significant others.

“Agreed,” Helena saw the sense of it. Birthdays and anniversaries were definitely a cultural encumberment of the highest inconvenience, and one with which she had long since tasked her PA. Nevertheless, she appreciated the distinction this practicality added to their love, as opposed to other loves.

“And we’re both obviously still married…” Myka added, but did not specify the practicalities her marriage inflicted on her, or the ones Helena’s did on Helena. Thinking about what marriage meant was too big and depressing for her to contemplate.

“Which commitments are likely to take precedence over our engagements with one another,” Helena picked up where Myka left off, helping Myka stay on topic. They were, after all, still negotiating.

Myka smiled her gratitude and nodded.

They looked at each other silently for a moment, each considering their commitments in their own marriages, in their own lives.

Myka was first to bring up the rewards.

“But there is also _this_ ,” she shuffled under the sheet, placed a confident palm on Helena’s cheek and pulled her in for a kiss, attentive and demanding, “and _this_ is where we take and we give what we want,” she looked into Helena’s eyes and her heart swelled with love, with _this_ love, “so long as _this_ is good for you and good for me.”

Helena was dizzy with the kiss, with how Myka managed to entice every part of her – her heart and mind and body with the definition of their love. She was light-headed, having been swept off her feet into an explicit understanding of what loving Myka meant in practice. “This is good for me,” she breathed and let go of her armour, the sheet at her chest, to pull Myka to her with both hands. She dominated the next kiss, intending to dazzle Myka into dumbfounded breathlessness, and she succeeded. “When I tell you I love you, then,” she held Myka to her, “I mean that _this_ is good for me,” she held Myka’s lips in hers for a moment, “that _you_ are good for me.”

“Yes,” Myka hummed and fell in for another kiss. “You are good for me,” she pushed Helena to the bed so she could hold more of her, eager to put their new understanding to good use. “I love you.”

Myka’s lips were on hers all too quickly, and they stole her words away from her, words that just found a new meaning, a new truth. Then Myka’s hands were at the nape of her neck and the small of her back, and that truth echoed in her, resonated with every emotion, every tendon, every thought and every cell.

When Myka’s mouth left hers in favour of her chest and shoulders, those words fell from her lips, free, with their new meaning, “I love you.”


	19. XVIII. (4 weeks previous)

“I have to admit that I’m a little bit freaked out,” Myka said with a slightly intoxicated smile as the lock to Helena’s Manhattan apartment clunk heavily in its barrel.

“And why would you be freaked out?” Helena asked and pushed the heavy door open, revealing the lower floor of the duplex. She stepped to the side and gestured for Myka to walk in.

Myka screwed a dubious look at Helena as she walked past her, observing the décor of the space. Myka could pick out Helena’s influence: most of the artwork, the clean surfaces, the solid colours. Similarly, it was easy for Myka to pick Helena’s husband’s influence: tall walls of leather-bound books, historical artefacts hanging on walls, masquerading as art. They were bulky and garish, lacking the panache and elegance of Helena’s chosen pieces.

She waited for Helena to shut the door behind them and for her to catch up. Even though she knew they were alone, she didn’t want to shout any of the words and impressions she was about to share, because Myka felt just a little bit guilty.

Being in New York with Helena felt indulgent and a little bit wrong because they were meant to be attending a trade show in Brooklyn. They most certainly made the most of their first day there, but instead of the obligatory, dull and pointless end-of-trade-show-day networking drinks at some faceless hotel bar, Helena and Myka each left their respective colleagues in favour of what would undoubtedly be a considerably more enjoyable night.

Helena placed a reassuring hand on the small of Myka’s back as she walked up behind and around her, until she was faced with the tall woman, in her arms.

“I’m a little freaked out because this place is both yours and William’s,” she spoke softly, rubbing her nose against Helena’s. “You stay here with him all the time.”

“He stays at my Beacon Hill flat just as frequently,” she whispered, relishing the soft touch, the scent of whiskey from Myka’s lips, the light dizziness of champagne she felt, the sudden steadiness Myka’s arms lent her.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Myka chuckled lightly, brushing Helena’s lips with hers.

Helena gasped and returned a chuckle. “What would make you feel better, darling?” she husked and brought her hands to Myka’s chest, and her tongue to Myka’s bottom lip.

Myka sighed and closed her eyes, feeling any and all hints that suggested that evening was a gluttonous excess being vaporised by Helena’s seductive touch. She dipped her head to kiss Helena deeply, tasting strawberries and expensive champagne on her tongue, tasting a light moan Helena released as she leaned into Myka.

They kissed long and slow, alternating between passion and playfulness, nipping at each other’s lips and cheeks and necks, chuckling and moaning and gasping as they went. Myka, while not feeling guilty anymore, was still quite aware of the fact she was in an unfamiliar space, one that was much larger than the spaces she usually occupied with Helena – even her Beacon Hill apartment.

She was more aware of it as Helena dragged them, ever so gently, towards a flight of stairs and then up. They reached the top of the staircase with a slight tumble and a small laugh that broke their kiss and separated their bodies for the first time since they entered the apartment.

Myka took a further step onto the landing and looked around. The apartment looked even bigger from where they were, a mezzanine level that overlooked the downstairs living area.

“Come, now,” Helena tugged at her arm, with a salacious smile, dragging her down a dark corridor.

They passed two sets of doors to darkened rooms, one on the left and one on the right. The next room was dimly lit and in the glimpse that Myka managed to cast, she caught a king size bed and a portrait on a bedside table, of Helena held from behind by a dashing man.

Then Helena tugged her harder and through the last set of doors which led to a space that Myka intuitively recognised as Helena’s. The colour scheme was near identical to that of her Boston apartment, sparse furnishings, minimalistic art. Their familiarity made Myka feel more at ease, even though not entirely relaxed – the spirit of William Wolcott infused in the walls of the apartment, threatening to call them out.

Helena pulled Myka towards her, where she stood by the bed, into an embrace not dissimilar to the one they had interrupted by their journey to the bedroom. She looked into Myka’s eyes as her fingers raked through soft curls, and she could tell something was chomping at Myka’s subconscious, something was bothering her. “Look at me,” she said and held her lover’s gaze in her own. “Focus on me.”

Myka narrowed her eyes, looked into the warm, brown eyes of the shorter woman’s, how they burned for and beamed at her, framed by thick, black lashes. She looked at her sculpted, roman nose and how it flared ever so lightly as Myka ran her hands up and down Helena’s sides, how either side of it glowed in an ever-darkening shade of pink. She looked at Helena’s lips, lightly parted, only a hint of dark red lip gloss remaining on them, their colour blossoming by kisses, by arousal, by want.

And all Myka wanted then, all Myka could think of was kissing those lips, making those cheeks flush red, making those eyes burn more intensely until they fluttered in ecstasy.

_Damn it_ , she thought as her breath hitched, _that_ _Helena reads me so well, that Helena knows me so well, that Helena mends me so well_. “I love you,” she breathed as their lips met again to rekindle their kiss of a few moments ago.

Helena smiled and hummed her gratitude and she pulled Myka closer to her because _God, Myka, you are so good for me_.

Myka was already halfway down Helena’s silk blouse when her lover’s hands removed them from the smooth garment and pushed them down to the leather belt at her hips.

“Okay,” Myka husked and bit on her lower lip before Helena snagged it between her own teeth, divesting Myka of her buttoned top. Myka managed to undo the buckle and loosen the belt and just about managed to undo the top two buttons of Helena’s trousers when Helena’s mouth, wet and hot, wrapped around her the top of her breast, which Helena pushed up as far as she could. Myka gasped and pulled Helena’s hips to hers on instinct, only to lose her balance and fall backwards, to sit on the bed behind her.

Helena chuckled and shucked out of her trousers and underwear, leaving the silk blouse, which bottom buttons were still done up, to fall from her shoulders and bunch at the top of her hips like a rumpled skirt. She stalked closer to Myka, licking her lips, watching Myka watching her as she drew near, breathing shallowly through parted lips, watching Myka’s restless fingers fidget, not sure where to touch first.

Myka made up her mind with one firm hand on Helena’s waist and a second that glided up her back to the clasp of her bra, releasing Helena’s breasts just in time for the distance between Helena and Myka to close, and for lips to close around a patch of flesh, for mouth to suckle it and for teeth to find a pebbled nipple and test the effect pressure, speed, hardness and pull of a bite had.

Helena cried – a proper loud cry – followed by a loud moan and a gasp. Myka stopped to look -Helena had been loud in the past, but never quite like this.

“Don’t stop,” Helena breathed and kissed Myka hard, desperately, passionately, before leading her mouth back to her chest and climbing into her lap, straddling her.

Myka growled as she resumed exciting Helena, experimenting methodically with the dull pain of suction, the sharp pain on biting, the wet softness of tongue and the dry caress of lips. The more she sampled, the more she tasted, the tenser Helena’s body felt in her arms. _She’s close_ , Myka thought, _she’s so close_. She let her hand, the one that was pressed to Helena’s upper back so that Myka could take more of Helena into her mouth, slide down to the small of Helena’s back. Her other hand, which held Helena to her at her waist, she brought to rest between her belly and Helena’s thigh, because she knew -- and her cognition stopped working for a moment when Helena slapped her open palm at her back, seeking purchase, fingernails digging into muscle and, surely, leaving bright red tracks in their wake -- she _just knew_ that in a matter of seconds Helena will come and she will fall into Myka’s lap, her knees relaxing allowing Myka to --

Helena cried again as Myka slipped inside her, and her hand, the one she had at Myka’s neck to keep her mouth where it was, shot to the back of Myka’s arm, squeezing it, pushing it harder as she rose to thrust against it and breathed, “I love --“ a gasp ,“love ---“ and a moan, “Myka,” and a sharp cry, “don’t stop”.

* * *

Helena woke up just before six in the morning to a bed that felt colder than it should have been, before reminding herself that Myka was a very early riser. She was, however, slightly surprised (or perhaps disappointed) that Myka didn’t use that time the way she usually did. Helena found the mornings after her nights with Myka just as pleasurable, if not more.

She left the warm bed, wrapped herself in a silk robe and headed out to the corridor and then the mezzanine to find Myka.

She found her curled up on the sofa, inside a duvet from her bedroom, facing the large windows of the duplex, overlooking Central Park. She hovered down the staircase silently and crept up behind her lover. She leaned over the back of the sofa and placed a kiss under Myka’s jaw while sneaking a hand into the warm duvet, to find Myka was still naked underneath.

Helena hummed richly at the feel of Myka’s breasts and her warm belly. “Cosy,” she whispered. “May I join you?”

Myka craned her neck and looked up at Helena with a bright smile and sparkling green eyes. She gestured to the table where a steaming pot of tea and two mugs had been waiting.

“I take it the ghost of my husband had ceased to bother you enough for you to make us some tea?” Helena asked as she walked around the sofa.

Myka chortled and opened a gap in her shell of blankets to let Helena in. “I’ve never seen the sun rise over Central Park,” she murmured with a smirk, “so I asked William for permission.”

“And has he granted it?” Helena asked while making herself comfortably naked next to Myka.

Myka nodded decisively. “Your husband is a very kind man, letting me share so many of the luxuries in his life,” she looked at Helena then, smug with her attempt at flirting.

Helena mock pouted while considering Myka’s performance.

“Oh, come on,” Myka protested.

“Pleasure, maybe,” Helena leaned over to pour them tea, “Object of desire would have been even better,” she placed a mug in front of Myka and took one to her as she leaned back. “Still, a decent effort, Ms. Bering. I note improvement, but I’m certain you could do better if you apply yourself.”

“A sunrise is not an object of desire,” Myka argued.

Helena sipped her tea and hummed, “And William hasn’t considered me a pleasure the way you do for nearly fifteen years now,” she mused. “Fine,” she sighed, “I am a luxury. I give it a seven and half.”

Myka smiled triumphantly and reached for her tea.

“I never realised you were such a romantic,” Helena asked while watching the skies above the buildings of Fifth Avenue change from indigo to a light blue, and clouds only beginning to make themselves known above the largely exposed branches of end-of-autumn trees.

“Why romantic?” Myka loved how clouds changed their opacity at sunrise, from a light grey to an invisible blue, to a bright display of oranges and pinks. “Because I like to watch the sunrise?”

Helena nodded after another sip of her tea.

“I don’t think it’s romanticism,” Myka said. “It’s more of an existential perspective thing. Respect for nature, for the universe. That’s why I stargaze.”

Helena’s eyebrows shot up, but her eyes were still fixed on what had become the impossible gradient of white to orange to blue, as the sun began climbing above the horizon, somewhere past Brooklyn, beyond where they could see it. “I didn’t know you were an amateur astronomer.”

“Mmmm,” Myka confirmed and enjoyed the warmth the tea was spreading through her from the inside out, and the warmth Helena’s body, pressed against hers, was spreading from the outside in.

“Tell me about your existential perspective,” Helena asked.

“You know, the usual,” Myka sighed, because she knew all this was written and said so many times before, she couldn’t even cite a single source. There are so many. “When you look through a telescope at Jupiter, you see a ball, suspended in complete darkness, with a bunch of tiny balls suspended around it.”

Helena sniggered mutely. That was probably the most disrespectful description of planet observation she had ever heard in her life, not at all the usual.

“And if I showed this picture to a person who didn’t know what it was, they wouldn’t think anything of it. But it’s the fact that what you’re seeing there is 365 million miles away,” Myka emphasised the ‘m’s and paused for a second, appreciating the meaning of the number. “So if you travelled a million miles a day, every day, it would still take you a year to get there,” the excitement in her voice was palpable now, “and that those tiny balls… one of them is larger than Mercury. One of them has an oxygen-based atmosphere. One of them has tectonic activity. And the big ball they spin around is a swirling storm of gasses that are some of the lightest matters on Earth, but they spin so fast they create gravity. And it’s two and half times the size of all the planets in the solar system combined.”

Myka fell silent for a moment, in awe of the facts she just shared. Those facts filled her with awe every single time she considered them.

Helena was taking those facts in as first rays of sunlight became visible, mostly by turning the buildings on the other side of the park to dark, looming shadows.

“And when you’re looking through your telescope at Jupiter, it moves across your lens so fast, because the earth is spinning. You can see how fast the earth rotates when you stargaze,” she added and took another sip from her tea. “And what we’re seeing now,” she pointed towards the tall, glass windows, “is because we are sitting on a mass of rock that’s on a giant ball of water and magma that’s currently spinning at 300 miles per hour, where we are. If we were in Kenya, we’d be hitting more than three times that speed. That’s why we have dawn and dusk and twilight and the closer you get to the equator, there’s just sunset-dark-sunrise-light.”

Myka paused again with a sigh. She looked at Helena who was looking out the windows, transfixed by bright white skies and the kaleidoscope clouds. She spent a whole minute watching Helena, who seemed oblivious to Myka, to the fact she stopped talking. She wondered if she had tuned her out, the way Gi did when Myka talked about these sorts of things, things Myka was excited about and Gi wasn’t.

Helena blinked suddenly with a sharp inhale and turned to look at Myka. “I never knew that,” she smiled gently. “Where’s the existential perspective then?”

Myka quirked a brow at Helena, not sure if she was being polite in indulging her. “It’s in the fact that to be here, on this rock, moving through space at nearly 67 thousand miles an hour, and being able to look through a telescope and see Jupiter and Ganymede and Europa and Callisto, and to be able and sit _here_ , in _this_ building, and admire _this_ sunrise,” Myka took a deep breath, “we’ve overcome exceptional odds.”

Helena stared at Myka and narrowed her eyes slightly, wondering where Myka was going with her existentialism. It could be exceptionally upbeat or equally grim, and she wasn’t sure which of the two was the better option.

“For us to be able to observe all this, for all this to exist for us to observe…” Myka smiled meekly, “it was more likely for all of this to have _not_ happened than _to have_ happened,” she brought the mug to her lips but didn’t drink. “It survived the odds. We survived the odds. So – respect it. Enjoy it. It’ll never be _exactly_ like this, you know?”

Helena looked at Myka intently, then blinked, then leaned forward to place her mug on the coffee table. She then extracted Myka’s mug from her hands and placed it on the table as well. She turned to face Myka as best she could, placed a warm palm on her cheek and smiled lovingly at her.

She said nothing, though, which made Myka nervous. “What?” she prodded anxiously.

“Heaven help us both, Myka, you are an optimist,” Helena giggled and kissed Myka chastely on her lips.

“What are you, then?” Myka enquired and pulled away.

“I am a forced realist,” Helena replied, after nestling herself against Myka.

“Forced?” Myka let her hands roam Helena’s naked shoulders under the heavy blanket.

Helena hummed in contentment and to the affirmative. “My work, my lifestyle all warrant me to be a realist. I must place little faith in anything but what is in front of me.”

“So if you weren’t forced?”

Helena smiled sweetly. “As an academic, I learned that I am a constructivist,” she nuzzled Myka’s neck and turned back to look out the window. The sun was coming over the buildings across the park, filling the duplex with warm, golden light. “I adore the concept that reality is not a single, fixed experience, shared in exactly the same way by all. There is a lot to be said for the process of understanding how others experience and perceive a given situation and then accepting these aspects as truth,” she looked up at Myka. “Like this sunrise,” she looked at the glorious woman holding her, how the rich sunlight fell on her features granting her skin the appearance of chiselled Italian marble, with her stern brow, rounded cheeks and full lips, top slightly protruding above the bottom, straight chin and perfectly arched jaw. “I never considered the odds or the speeds or the distances. I knew they were there, I just never bothered to consider putting them together in context,” she reached a diligent finger to Myka’s jawline. “But then you told me your truth in it,” she traced that line, from Myka’s chin to the hollow under her ear.

Myka shuddered at the touch and closed her eyes.

“And I find your truth mesmerising and honest. It takes an awful lot of trust to wholly take another’s truth and fully consider it with as little bias as possible; and to accept it as your own truth. And such trust is the cornerstone of optimism.”

“You’re more than a little biased,” Myka challenged.

“Why would I be biased?” Helena tried to refute the allegation.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Myka moved them under the covers, so thighs were deliciously close to exciting places, “because of _this_ , maybe?” she leaned in so everything pressed _deliciously_ closer.

“You think I am more inclined to accept your perspective as truth because I want to get in your pants?” Helena’s arrogance made itself known.

Myka smiled devilishly. “You’re already in my pants, Helena.”

“No bias, then,” Helena pushed against Myka.

Myka laughed richly and sent a questing hand down Helena’s belly. “I think you’re biased because you want to stay in my pants. And you want me to stay in yours,” she leaned her forehead against Helena’s and brushed her lips lightly against her lover’s.

Helena’s breath hitched. “You may be a slow student when it comes to flirting, darling, but your skills in the art of seduction…” Helena breathed and snaked her hand to find Myka’s sliding down her. She removed it from her altogether. She pushed Myka back, so she could slip between her legs, so she lay fully against her, so she could grind her pelvis slowly and gently against Myka’s.

Myka’s lips fell open and she drew in shaky breaths and released quiet moans in time with Helena’s movements, which Helena kept shallow and small. Then Helena fell onto her lover and into a kiss, commanding the whole of Myka’s body with a sudden rush of passion. Kissing her deeply, thrusting harder against her, hands floating down her body, to feel her breathing, to feel her whimpering. To feel her thrusting back almost uselessly, because the way Helena was on top of her meant she could barely move.

Without warning she entered Myka, who cried in surprise, in rapture, eyes torn open. Helena pushed deep inside her, and Myka bucked, her cries replaced by moans. Loud, primal moans, the kind Helena hardly ever heard, but _by God_ , she loved them.

Helena rose to sit above Myka, keeping a hard pace and harder pressure, watching Myka tense and build, letting Myka overwhelm her senses. Skin donning a golden, shimmering glow, warm rays of early sun caressing the curves of Myka’s muscles and flesh; the exhilarating scent of both their arousal mixed with the relaxing aroma of well-brewed tea; the faint, rusty taste of blood in her mouth, as her own teeth broke the skin of her lips; the sound of Myka’s passion reverberating in the commodious hall of her apartment; the silken, molten tightness of Myka’s sex as it pulled her fingers deeper and harder.

And Helena felt her own sex pulse and tighten, and she wasn’t even touched, and she knew it was time for her to bring her other hand to Myka’s clit and push them both over the edge. Helena tumbled through the very first orgasm that was induced purely by pleasuring another, and Myka fell over another one of Helena’s glorious edges, loud and demanding and long, an edge off which Helena kept her for as long as she possibly could.

_Myka is right_ , Helena thought and she slipped her fingers out from Myka, only to push back in, slowly, delicately.

“Helena,” a drained Myka pled.

“You are right, darling,” Helena whispered and laid down to cover Myka’s body with her own. “About my bias,” her lips touched Myka’s with the same delicateness her fingers touched Myka’s centre. “I want to stay in…” she whispered and her own centre clenched with her next thrust inside.

Myka sighed. She brought her hand to push Helena’s hair back, so she could see her face, so should touch it. But Helena slipped inside her again, and Myka’s fist clenched in Helena’s locks and she pulled her in for a kiss, an urgent answer to Helena’s want. “I want you…” she breathed heavily, “I want you to stay in.”

* * *

Eventually, Helena had to begin prepping for the panel she was hosting later that day and Myka had to deal with some work emails and the usual morning correspondence with Giselle and their son. Once those were dealt with, they lent themselves to getting dressed and organised and, even if somewhat distractedly, to each other.

Over breakfast, Myka enjoyed observing Helena at her most domestic. It was quite evident that this apartment was a home to her, the ease with which she reached every utensil and piece of crockery as she made them macchinetta-brewed coffee and arranged the croissants the doorman got for her on shiny, green plates.

“How come it troubles you so much here and not in Boston?” Helena attempted to get to the bottom of why Myka was so perturbed by William’s hinted presence. “I understand that you can see more vestiges of him here than in Boston, what with his family’s coat of arms and his philosophy and law books – believe me I tried to change his mind about them plenty of times, and he simply will not have it.”

Myka pointed vigorously at Helena as she spoke the last sentence. “For exactly _that_ reason,” she felt victorious, as if Helena handed her a winning argument. “He’s invested in here. I can feel your…” Myka tried to give the sensation a name, “joint history… and it’s not like the story’s ended, he’s still _here_.”

Helena leaned her elbows on the breakfast bar and took a sip of her espresso, pondering Myka’s statement. True – she and William shared a history in this apartment, they _still share_ their history in this apartment, something they rarely shared in Boston. The Boston residence was purchased when Helena found out William was having his second affair, before she decided to have her first, before they reached their arrangement. The Boston flat was a utilitarian purchase for Helena, more than anything, a place for her to escape to, somewhere to call her own when she worked in New England.

Myka held her Americano to her lips and inhaled the fresh and invigorating scent. “Especially since…” she started quietly.

They exchanged looks for a moment, until Helena understood Myka was referring to the fact their affair wasn’t the same as any other for Helena and William. She placed the small porcelain cup down and walked over to Myka, stood behind her to brush curls from her shoulder. “I find it poetic and rather beautiful that I share this pleasure, as you call it, with the two people I love,” she placed a single, dry kiss behind her ear. She was still getting used to loving William and Myka, she was still getting used to them both sharing spaces in her soul. For all those reasons, she felt it so right that Myka spent time with her in this apartment.

Myka chuckled. “You’re as big an optimist as I am,” she turned to face Helena with a smile. “Is William an optimist too?” she stumbled every so lightly on Helena’s husband’s name.

Helena looked around, at Wolly’s items, to recall him through the twenty-odd years she had known him. “For the most part. But he would never admit to it out loud. Not even to me. Years of practising engineering and law and even longer years of managing his family and their affairs left his optimism highly guarded.”

“And what would he say about you?” Myka asked, and found it easier with each question to accept William’s existence, his proximity.

Helena laughed. “Wolly would say I’m a hopeless optimist and a fierce romantic,” she blushed a little, knowing how well her husband knew her most secret soft spots, and how Myka had an inkling of them, but was yet to pick at them as efficiently as he did.

Myka beamed at Helena with a knowing smile, acknowledging the romantic and the optimist in her. They were the ones who made her blush.

“And what would Giselle say about you?” Helena was curious.

“Giselle?” Myka asked, surprised.

Helena nodded.

“Gi lost interest in me a long time ago,” Myka scoffed and sipped her coffee.

Helena felt her heart break for Myka, for stating the fact so flatly and for the meaning of it. In the handful of times they had discussed Giselle, Helena got the distinct feeling that Giselle’s capacity for deep and meaningful emotional and intellectual expression was somewhat hampered. Helena had gathered that Myka had had other outlets for her intellect, a healthy thing to have acquired in any relationship. But since they had begun being explicit with their emotions for one another, she had grown to learn that Myka was a profoundly emotional individual, with depths and breadth of emotion she had previously attributed to her intellect alone.

“I cannot imagine anyone ever losing interest in you, darling,” Helena said with a soft smile.

Myka blinked and smirked, not sure if Helena was teasing, flirting or complimenting her. But Helena’s stare was relentless and her cheeks had not lost the soft hue of the romantic optimist, and Myka bit her lips and blushed also.

Helena leaned in to grant Myka a gentle kiss, then she headed to the doorway and began collecting her things, preparing for departure. “That’s how it’s done,” she looked back and winked at Myka mischievously.

“You’re mean,” Myka muttered, feeling cheated out of a compliment in favour of a lesson in flirting, and then got up from her stool and followed suit, gathering her things from the counter into her shoulder bag.

“I’m not as mean as you think I am,” Helena smiled, “I’m only mean if I didn’t mean it.”

And Myka laughed heartily, and began plotting her revenge.


	20. Epilogue (156 [3 years] weeks on)

Myka walked up the narrow street, up the hill, towards Helena’s Beacon Hill townhouse. She had received an email only two days earlier, confirming that Helena would return from her trip to Europe that day, and would love to meet her at her Boston apartment; this would not have been a matter that required any further thought, if it weren’t for the fact that Helena’s trip was meant to have been a full month and arriving to back to the US when she did, meant she had cut it short by a full ten days.

That, and the actual date of her arrival.

A gust of wind blew a dusting of early snow off the naked trees above her and into an invisible crack between her scarf and neck, which whisked Myka’s mind back to the salted Beacon Hill sidewalk, and the piles of fresh snow shovelled to the edge of the kerbs. Myka hurried her steps, placed the strap of her shoulder bag higher up so she could hunch and pull up the collar of her thick coat, trying to keep the icy wind and errant snowflakes from finding her skin again.

The sound of her heels on the sidewalk and of the salt crunching underfoot reminded her of the first night she had ever met Helena, three years and three weeks ago, in a small café just off Harvard Square. It reminded her how nervous she had been, how out of reach Helena seemed, how terrifying the idea of an affair was. She remembered that quick embrace, that hasty peck, cheek to cheek, and how much promise it held for Myka then. For the Myka _of_ then.

That was a lonely, faded Myka, alone and rejected and tired. A Myka who had been pushed to the edges of her ability to give with receiving absolutely nothing in return. A Myka rendered speechless, motionless and lacklustre at the end of five long years of excruciating solitude in her marriage. A Myka riddled with guilt and self-hatred for having broken promises she never thought herself capable of breaking, promises she knew she had to break or she, herself, would break.

And how, in the turn of the first year of knowing Helena Wells, everything she had hoped having a lover would give her was exceeded. How, in the three years she had known Helena, she had found her inspiration and motivation at work, at home and – ironically – in her marriage, which had not been better in years.

How she had learned to redefine love and intimacy and sex and marriage, how she had allowed Helena to redefine them with her, and how this affair had become a relationship, a committed relationship of sorts, too, almost a second marriage within both their marriages.

And how her own marriage had been rejuvenated, been given a new lease of life, because Myka was no longer harbouring expectations of her needs being met by a wife who was still reluctant or struggling to deal with her depression. And similarly, Giselle stopped taxing Myka with expectations and then punishing herself and Myka for failing to meet them, because expectations was no longer the currency with which they traded.

True, Myka preferred it if Giselle were a knowing participant, like William was. But over the past three years, while contemplating this with Irene and Claudia, it became clear to Myka that so long as Myka was able to be the best mother she could be to Charlie and the best wife she could be to Gi, Giselle was getting from their marriage all that she wanted. And it was her time with Helena that gave Myka the energy, strength and focus to be the best she could be. To be better.

It was only when Myka was exhausted and wanting and worn out that Gi complained, because it was only then that Myka slipped back to survival mode and consequently made less of herself available. And since starting her affair with Helena, Myka would only get exhausted when she didn’t see her lover for extended periods of time.

The more it was evident that Myka’s marriage was improving, the less it mattered that the cause for that improvement was her affair, the more Myka’s guilt faded and was replaced with a pragmatic sense of achievement and even joy, because for the first time in shy of a decade, Gi was happier than she’d ever been, as was Myka – even though Myka’s source of marital happiness was definitively split between her affair with Helena and her home life.

While taking the steps up to the townhouse’s front doors, she smiled to herself with the knowledge that Helena, for all the lovers she had had before Myka, had changed over their time together as well. She knew that she meant so much more to Helena than any of her other lovers, enough to acknowledge that she found a home in Myka that she didn’t think possible she’d find again.

She knocked on Helena’s door lightly and shook snow from her hair.

Helena let Myka in and peeled the heavy coat and scarf from her, to find Myka’s back was nearly entirely exposed, framed by the thin line of the silk dress she was wearing and a strip of chiffon draping around it, from the curve of Myka’s shoulders, along the lean line of her waist, curving to span the dip in the small of her back, just before it sloped into her backside, where it hugged her frame neatly, seamlessly, undisturbed.

Helena’s breath caught at the sight. “Darling,” she wrapped Myka in an embrace from behind, ruffling her hair, freeing droplets of water, former flakes that didn’t escape her mane in time.

Myka turned in her arms and leaned down to grant her a welcoming kiss. “Hey,” she whispered sweetly into warm lips, tasting of red wine. “I was surprised to get your email.”

“I was surprised by what one can achieve when one insists on the proper application of communication technology,” Helena purred before taking Myka’s lips in hers again.

Myka hummed into the kiss, running her hands along Helena’s sides, feeling the coarseness of the tweed waistcoat she had on. “You got it all done in two weeks?”

Helena nodded gently and slid her fingers down Myka’s naked back, to the very edges of the dress she was wearing, to spots that made Myka gasp and writhe. “You,” she murmured into Myka’s lips, “are wearing my favourite dress,” she kissed her way down Myka’s neck while walking her backwards, from the foyer to bedroom, where the bed was turned down and ready for them.

“And you are wearing my favourite waistcoat,” Myka sighed, her hands spanning Helena’s slender form, feeling the cool silk of the back of the tailored garment, “and shirt,” her fingers reached the stiffly ironed ridges of the shirt’s collar, “and tie,” her fingers slipped under it, feeling the cool, silk strands around Helena’s neck to her front, where it was looped in a neat Full Windsor. “It’s almost a shame to take them off,” her musing tailed off with a soft sigh when Helena ended her trail of kisses just above Myka’s breast.

They stood near the bed and Helena pulled away for a moment. “It’s never a shame for you to take off my clothes,” she loosened her tie before giving Myka and encouraging push, to fall back on the bed.

Myka sat down on the bed with a small huff and looked up at her lover, who was busy removing cufflinks from her shirt, only to discard them carelessly and step forward, to weave her fingers in dark curls and spend a second or two admiring them, the warmth at the nape of that neck, those honest, green eyes that bound her in their magic.

“It’s almost as if we were marking an occasion,” Myka said through her half-smile and bit on her lip seductively, pulling Helena’s hips towards her, tugging at beltloops and fiddling with fastenings.

“Almost,” Helena acquiesced and leaned in for a searing kiss, then pulled away with a smile.

“But we’re not,” Myka returned a smile as Helena went to her knees in front of her, her hands sliding from her hair down her front, over her breasts and abdomen, to gently massage her thighs.

“We’re not,” Helena agreed and dragged her hands lower, until they reached the hem of the dress, a few inches above Myka’s knees. Myka’s mouth fell open as the woman in front of her pushed the fabric of the dress up so she could push her legs apart.

Helena caught the scent just then, Myka’s scent, and she couldn’t wait a second longer to lean in and verify her suspicion that Myka had not had any under things on. She thought as much when she took her coat off in the foyer, but in the three years they were together Myka had never worn _anything_ without underwear.

Her breath turned heavy as she pushed the dress up, still. Myka lifted herself to ease the task, and Helena thanked her with a loving caress of her now exposed buttocks. Helena then pulled her forward, to where her mouth was eager to taste and suck and nibble and bite and please.

* * *

Later, much later, Myka pulled herself from Helena’s body with a soft sigh, lifting her hips to let the dildo slip out from her. She wasn’t stopping, though. She started a new pace against the toy, reaching for the back of one of Helena’s knees, to lift them and angle herself against Helena’s centre, against the silicone phallus which other side was still inside her lover, to build the reclining woman up again for one of her favourite ways to come.

Helena twitched underneath her, pelvis rising to meet its opponent, a loud gasp falling from her lips as Myka’s arrangement pressed the dildo hard inside her and its base hard to her clit.

Drowning in her pleasure and unashamed announcing it to the room, Helena outstretched her arms, reached for the edges of the bed to grip them tightly, head thrown back, mouth open, sharp pants coming from it, in time with Myka’s thrusts.

Above her, statuesque to perfection, Myka used every muscle in her body to apply just the right touch, just the right move, just the right pressure to drive Helena to another climax.

* * *

The smell of coffee and Helena (and bit of herself) woke Myka up in the morning. The light was thin and grey, perfectly complementing the stark décor of Helena’s apartment. She turned around to be greeted by warm, brown eyes and soft lips that took hers with soft strokes, occasionally wetted by a hot tongue.

They shared coffee in bed while discussing the latest issue of one of Helena’s magazines, dedicated to the language of architecture. Myka was particularly taken by a piece by a Professor Artie Nielsen, which analysed the linguistic patterns found in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry and Philp Johnson.

“I love how everything is a language for this guy,” Myka summarised with enthusiasm.

“I should introduce you sometime,” Helena smiled back, thinking that Artie would probably find Myka infuriating in the same ways she herself did; only while Artie would storm away in a disgruntled huff, Helena would take her against a nearby available surface.

“I wonder why he doesn’t publish through the university anymore,” Myka mused aloud.

“Because you don’t pay as well as I do,” Helena answered quickly, and went to the bathroom before Myka’s competitive side shook awake.

Myka followed her to the bathroom after a moment, stepped behind her and wrapped her arms around Helena’s waist as she finished brushing her teeth.

“Will I see you next week?” Myka asked and trailed kisses up and down Helena’s neck, fingers feathering the edges of Helena’s belly to where it met her thigh.

Helena caught Myka’s eyes in the mirror and smiled. “Unless my Tuesday lunch cancels,” she turned around and stretched, so one of her breasts slid between those of her slightly taller counterpart. “In which case…” she pulled Myka to her for another kiss, a long, adoring kiss, suggestively grinding their bodies together.

They spent a little while longer fooling around while getting dressed. A light touch, a short kiss, a quick bite, a gentle caress. Helena sneaked a single, surreptitious stem of a yellow tulip into Myka’s shoulder bag, for her to find when she looked for her wallet, round about 11am, when she would buy her mid-morning perk.

Within the hour they shared one last kiss by the door to the apartment, before they each left to her job, to her other life, to do what they usually did on their Fridays, what they had always done on their Fridays, from before they even met.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you - as always - for reading.
> 
> Thank you, KellsBells, for your ongoing support and amazing friendship. 
> 
> This one's been knocking about for the better part of 2.5 years, and I had had enough. It's not perfect and never will be, but too much work has gone into it to let it gather virtual dust.   
> I've decided to post it in two halves mostly because it didn't feel like a series, but like a "proper" story, with a beginning and middle and end. It's a tricky topic that's laced with other tricky topics, and if one of them feels familiar to you, that's likely to be a painful familiarity. That same painful familiarity applied to me as well, which is why I felt it fair to you and the story that no one is lead on by click-mongering tactics.   
> So I put it all up here in one go (sort of).
> 
> I hope hope you enjoyed the journey, whether or not you agreed with the destination.
> 
> Either way, thank you for giving me your time. I always welcome your thoughts.


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